Florentino Pérez and Aleksander Ceferin, sharing a table and tablecloth next to the Tuileries in Paris. What would be an official appointment without further ado as UEFA’s prior hospitality to the two finalist clubs, has become an uncomfortable meeting for Real Madrid and the highest body in continental football. And what is worse, Nasser Al Khelaïfi would also be invited, a winger that AS has not been able to confirm. In the same week of Mbappé’s ‘no’ to whites. Morbid in triplicate.
At 8:00 p.m., Le Salles du Carrousel, a refined restaurant on Rue Rivoli, is reserved. It will be the first personal meeting between Florentino and Ceferin in the midst of another upsurge in the conflict over the Super League, now fueled by the resentment of the white club in the face of PSG’s financial impunity in the matter of Mbappé’s renewal. Ceferin took advantage of the troubled river to remember Madrid in an interview last Wednesday on the BBC. “Neither Real Madrid nor anyone will tell UEFA what to do,” he argued, alluding to his knowledge of what had supposedly happened in the operation to drop that he did not understand the complaints from the Spanish capital. “As far as I understand, the offer from Madrid and PSG were similar…” Some statements in which the Slovenian abounds in his challenge to Madrid, as he already made clear in AS when he spoke of a meeting canceled by Florentino and his position on the viability of the Super League: “The rebellious clubs can play it, I don’t care” .
The official dinner is the first of the occasions in which Florentino and Ceferin will have to share the same room, because they will also have to do so in the protocol acts immediately prior to the final on Saturday and in the Stade de France’s box of honor. Everything, in the middle of a cold war in which Liverpool acts as Switzerland, a neutral country…