Spain: FC Barcelona and Real Madrid declare war on each other | OneFootball

Joan Laporta - Florentino Perez

It is now all-out war between Spain's two giants, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona.

After coming together just months ago over the Super League project, Real Madrid and Barça are now completely at odds. While Real Madrid recently won a favorable court ruling from a Madrid tribunal and is demanding around €4.5 billion in damages from UEFA, Florentino Pérez now finds himself fighting this battle alone. In early October, Barça president Joan Laporta abandoned his Madrid counterpart and moved closer to the EFC (European Football Club, the new name for the ECA, the association of European clubs).

This Friday, Sport confirmed that this move played a major part in the now-irreversible split between Real and Barça. "Florentino-Laporta divorce with unresolved chapters. The relationship between the presidents of Real Madrid and FC Barcelona has deteriorated in recent weeks, especially after several episodes in which both La Liga and UEFA have played significant roles." the report reads.

The Madrid camp sees Barça’s return to UEFA as an act of betrayal. But Barça also has its own grievances against Los Blancos. The first concerns the Negreira case. As Sport reports, the Merengues "requested the inclusion in the case file of a dossier they submitted to Barcelona’s court no. 1, which included statements made by Joan Gaspart, Toni Freixa, Alfons Godall, and Albert Perrin to various media outlets." Recently summoned as a suspect in this affair, Barça is understandably angered by the Madrid rival’s move to complicate their legal defense.

Finally, Real Madrid celebrated as a major victory the cancellation of the La Liga match in Miami between Villarreal and the Blaugrana—a game that would have earned Barça €5 million.