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Spain’s
league programme will go ahead this weekend after a Madrid court upheld
a challenge from six breakaway clubs and blocked the threatened strike
action by the professional football league (LFP).

“The court decides
the official calendar for the first and second divisions should remain
unaltered for the next round of matches,” a statement from the court
said on Wednesday.

The LFP, which had
also suffered the resignation of its vice-president late on Tuesday,
accepted the judge’s ruling and immediately issued the kickoff times
for this weekend’s matches.

“Despite the
internal discrepancies at the heart of the LFP over the measures
adopted at the assembly on February 11, all the clubs that make up the
league continue to press their demands on the government,” the LFP said
in a statement.

“From this point
on, a new route map will be established that will allow us to unblock
the conversations in our search for solutions to the grievances of
professional football.” The managing director of Villarreal, one of the
six “rebel” clubs along with Sevilla, Real Sociedad, Espanyol, Athletic
Bilbao and Real Zaragoza, said he was relieved.

“A strike would have been a stab in the heart for football,” Jose Manuel Llaneza told Radio Marca.

The LFP had voted
last month to suspend matchday 30 unless the government scrapped a rule
that one La Liga game per matchday should be shown on freeview
television.

Much progress

Last week, as talks
with the government failed to make much progress, six clubs known as
the G-6 broke ranks and mounted a legal challenge to the LFP’s decision.

The league argues
that removing the obligation to show one match for free would
strengthen clubs’ bargaining power in negotiations on audiovisual
rights with media firms. The league also wants guarantees about how
much cash clubs are entitled to receive from betting and lottery
revenue.

The breakaway clubs
argued that a strike would be “disproportionate, inopportune, against
the interest of clubs, the competition and supporters and, what’s more,
against the law”.

A postponement
could have seen the end of La Liga pushed back three weeks to the
weekend of June 11/12 due to the hectic competition schedule over April
and May.

This weekend’s matches include leaders Barcelona at Villarreal and
second-placed Real Madrid at home to Sporting Gijon, both on Saturday