The first El Clasico of the 2019/20 season between Barcelona and Real Madrid will take place on December 18, the Royal Spanish Football Federation’s (RFEF) Competition Committee has confirmed.
The original LaLiga fixture was set for October 26 in Barcelona, but owing to civil unrest in the city over the past week – which saw the jailing of nine Catalan separatist leaders on Monday – the match was postponed.
Both clubs rejected a suggestion that the game could be played at Real’s Bernabeu Stadium instead and offered December 18 as their preferred option.
A Spanish Football Federation statement read: “The competition committee of the Royal Spanish Football Federation has agreed today to set December 18 as the date of the FC Barcelona v Real Madrid CF match… which was to be held on October 26 and was postponed due to exceptional causes.
“The decision of the competition committee has come after analysing in recent days the proposals of both clubs, which were invited to agree on a date and which have agreed on December 18 for the celebration of the postponed match.”
The original fixture was postponed following mass protests in Barcelona after nine Catalan political leaders were given lengthy prison sentences for their roles in the 2017 Catalan independence referendum.
Barca had urged the federation to allow the game to go ahead, saying it had ‘the utmost confidence in the civilised and pacifist attitude of its members and fans who always express themselves in exemplary fashion at Camp Nou’.
The Catalan club confirmed the rearranged date in a statement on their official website.
It said: “We have a date for El Clasico. The Spanish Football Federation’s competition committee has officially announced on Wednesday that the first game between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid this season, originally scheduled for October 26, will now be taking place on Wednesday 18 December at Camp Nou, the date that FC Barcelona originally proposed a week ago.”
Real Madrid TV presenter and LaLiga reporter Phil Kitromilides joined talkSPORT earlier in the week and said it was the right call to postpone the initial game, with reports claiming at least 96 people have been injured across the region during this week’s protests.
Kitromilides explained to talkSPORT host Jim White: “It’s a complex situation.
“In Catalonia, the region Barcelona play in, there has been an independent movement for several years and an independence vote organised there a couple of years ago which was deemed to be illegal by the Spanish government.
“The people who organised that vote were sentenced this week and they were very harsh sentences, I have to say – from 13 years to nine years in prison for organising this vote.”
He continued: “That was led to widespread civil unrest and protests in the city of Barcelona and region of Catalonia.
“So there has been a decision made that we cannot hold the Clasico given this atmosphere, and not least because it’s the Clasico, it’s an incendiary fixture and it means more than just football, it’s Real Madrid [real is Spanish for royal] against Barcelona, and in this current environment they’ve deemed it not a good idea, and I have to say it’s probably the right decision.
“It’s a question of the police can’t provide the security a fixture like this needs given what is going on in the city.
“There have been street battles, fires burning in the streets, Molotov cocktails, so to police that situation and the biggest fixture in the world with 100,000 people in the Nou Camp, it’s just not possible to guarantee the safety of everyone with this going on in Barcelona at the moment.”
