
Commercial entities floated a plan to Real Madrid that the Spanish club could pull out of the Champions League for a season and stage a world tour.
While the Bernabeu hierarchy were never going to agree to the idea due to how much they value winning actual trophies, the fact that external agents could even consider raising such a plan - including quoted figures of potentially €120m in revenue - is seen as reflecting the fraught position the game is in and a potential move to “globalised football”.