Real Madrid release official statement welcoming FIFA’s decision to abandon proposal to sell minority stakes to private investors. The Spanish giant also thanked UEFA and other football federations and organizations for their efforts in opposing this initiative.
The statement published on the club’s official site on Sunday comes just a day after European football governing body, UEFA, released its own statement welcoming FIFA’s decision.
It reads:
“Real Madrid C.F. warmly welcomes FIFA’s decision to abandon the proposal for the partial sale of the commercial rights to its competitions. Our club believes this is good news for football, for its governing bodies and, above all, for the millions of fans of our beloved sport.
Real Madrid wishes to express its gratitude to UEFA, the confederations and federations, and all the institutions that opposed this proposal firmly and responsibly. Their unity and sense of duty have protected football at a decisive moment.Clubs form the foundation upon which international football and the World Cup are built. It is the clubs that discover, train, develop and make available to national teams the players who make these major competitions possible.
International football and the World Cup are, above all, events of public interest, and they form a heritage that belongs to nations, to fans and to society as a whole. We therefore believe that they must never be treated as mere financial assets to be commercialised for the benefit of a select few.
Real Madrid firmly opposes any attempt to sell the future commercial revenues from these competitions without assuming any of the associated costs or risks in return. It is the clubs that bear these costs, and any initiative that seeks to appropriate football’s future revenues without assuming the responsibilities that generate them is unacceptable and must never be considered again.
This is, moreover, the very same principle that Real Madrid has consistently defended at national level. Our club opposed and did not participate in the deal whereby LaLiga committed a percentage of the clubs’ future broadcasting revenues for fifty years in exchange for the entry of a private fund such as CVC. Mortgaging for half a century revenue that belongs to the clubs, who bear the full costs and risks, sets a precedent that football must not repeat, whether in our country or internationally.”
Los Blancos began their pre-season campaign with quite a unimpressive momentum.
They gave up a 2-0 lead against Fiorentina at the Station Klagenfurt in Austria, bringing the game to a 2-2 draw.
This left new boss Jose Morinho seriously furious.
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