Spanish Soccer Official Bails On Meeting To Go To Real Madrid Game

One of the most pressing concerns in Spanish soccer today is how to deal with fan violence. Apparently, a more pressing concern is whether Real Madrid will win the Club World Cup that takes place this week, since the president of Spanish Soccer blew off a meeting addressing the violence to watch Los Blancos.

AS has the report, which isn't going over well among the rest of Spanish Soccer. Ángel María Villar, the vacationing president, was scheduled to attend an emergency meeting yesterday where the heads of various bodies in the country's soccer hierarchy were supposed to come up with unprecedented sanctions and preventative measures to ensure nothing like what happened between Atlético Madrid and Deportivo fans happened again.

Unfortunately, Villar isn't the best at timing. This week, Real Madrid are off in Morocco competing for the Club World Cup. Villar couldn't miss the culmination of a great Real season with a trophy they're practically guaranteed to win, so he decided to head out with the club and postpone the meeting.

The officials Villar stood up are less than pleased:

The Professional Football League and the CSD Higher Sports Council have taken umbrage at the decision and promised to "take all the relevant measures in light of the failure of the FEF to meet its stated commitments, laid out before the LFP and the CSD, and communicated publicly to Spanish society."

[...]

What has astounded the LFP and the CSD is that Villar himself suggested December 15 as the date to show a united front against violence in football. The timetable has now been pushed back to December 22.

Javier Tebas, the president of the LFP, summed up Villar's vanishing act: "Everything that happens at the federation is abnormal. When dealing with them, you have to get used to abnormality."

Ángel! You got some 'splaining to do!

[ AS]