Barcelona & Girona Stars Stand Still for First 15 Seconds of Their Match – Here’s Why

Barcelona and Girona players stood perfectly still for the first 15 seconds of their La Liga encounter, before the Spanish champions scored late to win 2-1, and a reason has finally been revealed. Pedri opened the scoring after 13 minutes, but Hansi Flick’s side was back to square one by the 20th minute when Axel Witsel levelled.

There were numerous opportunities to add to the score, but it wasn’t until the final moments of extra time that replacement Ronald Araujo intuitively struck to put his team a point ahead of rivals Real Madrid, who face Getafe on Sunday. While that outcome provides plenty of fodder for the rest of the campaign, there is just as much debate about one specific moment away from the action.

When something doesn’t sit right with them, football supporters usually lead the protests. However, amid mounting murmurs of player-led protests about congested scheduling and the constant introduction of additional competitions, as witnessed with UEFA and FIFA’s reworking of the Club World Cup this summer, both sets of players took a position against one such move.

Barcelona and Girona players protest against the fixture being played in the USA.

Although TV broadcasters elected not to highlight the protest, Barcelona and Girona players performed a one-of-a-kind 15-second act of resistance against La Liga’s decision to hold a game 4,700 miles away in the United States, which was also seen in another match that day.

Neither of the television feeds for Saturday’s Sevilla-Mallorca or Barcelona-Girona games began with the usual wide shot of the pitch, which would have revealed the players standing still for the first 15 seconds after kickoff in protest of the league’s decision to stage a regular-season match between Barcelona and Villarreal in Miami in December. Watch the incident below.

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In a third protest on Friday night, the TV feed showed the outside of Oviedo’s stadium as its players and Espanyol supporters protested. The stream returned to normal after 25 seconds of play, attempting to disguise the separation between players, supporters, clubs, and those in charge at the top.

The union stated that the symbolic move was intended to protest La Liga’s “lack of transparency, dialogue, and coherence regarding the possibility of playing a game in the United States.” The contentious game is scheduled for December 20 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, home of the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League.

According to AOL, La Liga president Javier Tebas has defended the game as a means to improving “revenues in the mid- to long-term” and the value of his competition’s television rights, which are lower than those of England’s Premier League.

Barcelona president Joan Laporta also supported the plan, saying it represented an opportunity to expand into the American sports market. Meanwhile, Tebas stated that the league intends to make international matches an annual affair.