FC Barcelona will return to Qatar in February 2015 to play a friendly match against a yet-to-be-decided opponent, the Spanish team has announced.
The decision was made at the club’s final board meeting of 2014 this week.
The game is being held here as part of an initially controversial five-year agreement that Barca has with Qatar Sports Investment. That deal, reportedly worth $230 million, runs through June 2016.
For the first two years of the contract, FC Barcelona sported Qatar Foundation logos on their jerseys, and now wears Qatar Airways‘ mark. The team is thought to be getting some $45 million a season in exchange for wearing the airline-branded jerseys.
Previously postponed
February’s friendly will come a year after Barca canceled its last engagement in Qatar.
The team was supposed to hold a friendly match in February of this year, but postponed the event indefinitely because the timing “coincided with the only rest days the first team has before the most intense part of the season.”
The cancellation disappointed many football fans here, who were hungering for more sports action after Qatar-owned Paris Saint Germain and Real Madrid faced off in Doha to a sold-out stadium in January.
Do you plan to check out the upcoming match? Thoughts?
I don’t think the deal with Barcelona was controversial, they never had an officlal sponsor before but the amount of debt Barca had it was only a matter of time they were going to have a sponsors name of their shirt and Qatar put up the most money. It’s just modern football.
What will be controversial is if Qatar Airways replaces Emirates as a major sponsor of Fifa. With so many allegationas against Fifa and Qatar for them Qatar to pump millions of dollars into Fifa over the next ten years will look very suspicious…..
Another friendly?
The amazing supercoppa match with Juventus and Napoli proved that only when there is a title and something to play for do we get to see a good game
better than usual games we see here
I’ve never liked the term ‘friendly’ match applied to these football/soccer matches for the simple reason that the sole motivating factor for these teams playing in Qatar whether it be Barcelona, or the England-Brazil game of a few years ago is…monetary payment.
Exactly and if the players too don’t get a part of the extra amount coming into the clubs coffers then they play hard to get to make them come out here to this places. As they say the local organisations contract is with the club and not with the players to force them to come and take part in something that does not bring any benefit to them or something that they are not really interested in
Players will come and play because they are not thinking your negative way.
Any updates about where from we can get the tickets?
Any update on Barcelona coming to doha ?