Leaked wiretaps of Piqué arranging the Super Cup in Arabia. Millions to Real and Barcelona, you keep the rest. We’ll push the Arabs

Why is the Spanish Super Cup being played in Saudi Arabia, you ask? It probably won’t surprise you that the reason is money. But you might not have expected who’s behind it all. Gerard Piqué, the Barcelona stopper.

For years, the Spanish Super Cup was played in a league winner – home/away cup winner style in the summer before the season. But as of 2020, it’s been turned into a mini-tournament where four teams (the 1st and 2nd teams in the league and the Copa del Rey finalists) compete in the form of semi-finals and finals. The Super Cup is played in January and, even less understandably, in Saudi Arabia.

In the past, Real Madrid players, namely Toni Kroos and Thibaut Courtois, have complained about the tournament being played in an Arab country that doesn’t draw many spectators. But certainly not Barcelona stopper Gerard Piqué, who is making a lot of money out of it.

According to the newspaper El Confidencial, the RFEF (Spanish Royal Football Federation) has made a pact with Kosmos Holding, of which Piqué is the president. In return for arranging the transfer of the Spanish Super Cup to Saudi Arabia, the association will earn 40 million euros for each year, while Kosmos will collect the commission of four million for each year played. The contract is signed for six editions, so Piqué’s company will earn 24 million euros.

El Confidencial also came up with a wiretap of Piqué being very friendly with the president of the Spanish Federation, Luis Rubiales, about moving the tournament to Arabia.

“Look, Rubi, if it’s about money… If they go for eight, that’s great, mate. Eight million to Madrid, eight million to Barca, two and one to the others. That’s 19, and you as a Federation keep the rest, mate. That’s six kilos. Before you had nothing, now you’ll have six kilos.

And we’ll push Arabia and maybe we’ll get more out of them. We’ll tell them if they don’t, Madrid won’t come. And we’ll get another bat out of them. You’ve played Spain before and made nothing out of it, so that’s something to think about, isn’t it? When money is involved,” Piqué told the federation president in March 2019.

Before the tournament moved to the Arab world, Rubiales and Piqué also negotiated where the Super Cup would be played on Spanish soil. Barcelona, of course, pushed for the Camp Nou, Real Madrid logically the Santiago Bernabéu. But the president of the Federation was inclined to Catalonia for personal reasons.

“Look, Geri. I’ll take it up with Madrid as well. I think Madrid will tell me no and that plays f*ck up our future to justify it. And we’ll say that Camp Nou is the stadium with the biggest capacity, that Barcelona are champions, that they’re cup winners or cup finalists or something. I think we have legitimacy,” Rubiales spun the plans.

But that’s not all that was said in the interview. “Tomas says Atlético Madrid will win La Liga, poor guy,” the federation president laughs with the Barcelona player two months before the end of the competition. Barcelona will win the league in the end.

15. on August 2019, the Super Cup finally managed to move to Saudi Arabia, and so Rubiales once again heated up the hotline with Pique.

“Geri, congratulations. And I don’t mean yesterday’s great game or your goal. I mean the deal is done with Saudi Arabia. I send you a hug, thank you for everything and I’m here whenever you need anything,” the Federation president sent a heartfelt message to the Barcelona stopper.

Of course, it is a clash of conflicts, as in many of Piqué’s businesses. But the Spanish footballer is teetering on the edge of not crossing that fine line. Thus, Kosmos will not receive money directly from the Spanish Federation in order not to violate the code of ethics, but in a roundabout way.

Source: El Confidencial, Marca