Real Madrid angry and frustrated with La Liga over Osasuna game schedule | OneFootball

Real Madrid’s 2025 pre-season will be an unusual and short one. The Merengues will face Osasuna in their La Liga opener at the Santiago Bernabeu on 19 August – just 40 days after their last competitive match, a semi-final vs PSG in the FIFA Club World Cup on 9 July.

Real Madrid had requested La Liga to reschedule the match to a later date, but were met with refusal, from the league and more recently from the sole judge of the Competitions Committee.

This will be the shortest off-season for Real Madrid since 1987, when La Liga expanded to 20 teams.

Real Madrid angry with La Liga

Now, AS reports that Real Madrid are angry and frustrated with the entire situation surrounding their shortened pre-season and the league’s unwillingness to move the opener vs Osasuna.

The frustration at Valdebebas is not so much directed at the Competition Committee’s sole judge, who rejected the club’s request to postpone their opening match, but rather at what the club perceives as La Liga’s lack of sensitivity.

Even Osasuna had agreed to the postponement, and there was no apparent conflict. What bothers Real Madrid most is what they see as La Liga’s failure to acknowledge the specific situation of a team coming off a major international competition.

Real Madrid are not happy with La Liga. (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)

FIFPro, the international players’ union, recommended that teams involved in the FIFA Club World Cup receive three weeks of rest followed by three weeks of pre-season.

Real Madrid will meet the rest period comfortably, the squad returns this Monday after 24 days off, but the pre-season itself will be much shorter than ideal. The team will have only 15 days of preparation before their first official fixture.

Not the plan Xabi Alonso wanted

This was not the pre-season head coach Xabi Alonso had envisioned. Real Madrid’s original plan was to start the league in the second round, on Sunday 24 August away at Oviedo.

Los Blancos had hoped La Liga would honour an agreement with the Spanish Footballers’ Association (AFE), that both Madrid and Atlético, as participants in the Club World Cup, would have their first matches postponed if they advanced to the knockout rounds.

However, La Liga later denied any such agreement existed. At Real Madrid, there is strong belief that their fractured relationship with the league president Javier Tebas played a role in the refusal, along with the league’s indifference towards the Club World Cup.

So far, Real Madrid have only confirmed one pre-season match – against WSG Tirol at Tivoli Stadium on 12 August in Innsbruck, Austria.

With no time for additional official friendlies, the Merengues may arrange training matches at Valdebebas with local Madrid-based teams.