The Miami El Clásico Is Already the Silliest El Clásico

Ah, soccer in America in the summertime. The smell of freshly cut tickets, the bounce of StubHub prices on the grass, and a gust of warm dollar bills blowing through completely inconsequential soccer games.

This summer has already been an unmitigated cash grab for soccer in the U.S., with a Gold Cup where Mexico barely scraped together a B-team. But now we have the International Champions Cup (ICC)—a tournament whose bombastic title is only matched by its irrelevance. There are champions at play, sure, and there is a cup. But other than that, it's a 75 percent speed training session for all European teams involved. Hardly the world-defining grandeur it makes itself out to be. Though in 2014, the ICC once yielded the highest attendance for a match on U.S. soil. $o there'$ that.

But now for 2017, bring in: El Clásico.

This is the kind of high profile event that penetrates even the thickest of American numb skulls—the people who rattle off epithets about soccer being a sport for sissies and floppers. Nay, this match resonates. This is El Clásico. This is a battle of Catalunya vs. Spain. This is 232 combined years of club history—115 years of coexistence. This is Zidane vs. Valverde. This is Benzema vs. Suarez. This is Messi vs. Rolando. Wait—Rolando?

Goddamnit. Things are already off to a bad start here. The Miami mayor actually just called Ronaldo "Rolando." But beyond his embarrassing "Rolando" gaffe, when asked what his favorite soccer match was, mayor Carlos Gimenez answered, "The best U.S. soccer victory in a World Cup, whatever that was," according to the Miami Herald. Nice choice, Carlos. Nice choice. But why do I have a feeling you're not talking about USA vs. England 1950? Or any match that you know of at all?

Ironically enough, neither Rolando nor Ronaldo will be playing tonight, as just yesterday afternoon, the Herald reported in another article that Ronaldo wasn't going to play in the Miami El Clásico after all, citing "personal reasons." One tournament organizer assured us that, "this is not a diva situation." But it also may be no small coincidence that the Real Madrid star will be making a court appearance in Spain on Monday for tax evasion. So there's that.

Meanwhile, the longevity of two stars' presence in El Clásico remains questionable, as both Barcelona's Neymar and Real Madrid's Gareth Bale are both hotly rumored to be on the way out of their respective sides. Bale is rumored to head back to the Premier League and Barcelona is already threatening to report the Neymar-interested Paris Saint-Germain F.C. for violating financial fair play rules—that's how far that contract is going along. Not to mention that Neymar is openly fighting his teammates during practice. So who knows if 2/3rds of Real Madrid's historied front three will be starting? And it's certainly not a good look for Barcelona's own historied front third to be fighting on the field. This is still speculation, but this El Clásico could potentially have no Neymar and no Bale on top of no Ronaldo.

Well it's a good thing no one spent too much money on this entirely friendly and completely inconsequential match, right?

My good sweet lord, what have they done? Aside from whatever insane decision that some yacht-setting gajillionaire threw down for front row, the upper deck nosebleeds are currently going for $324 on StubHub. And that's the current lowest ticket price for the match on StubHub. This is preposterous.

I mean, even Nicki Minaj knows how insignificant this El Clásico meet-up is. She didn't even bother putting pants on to go check out the training session with Drake yesterday:

But when it comes down to it, maybe this Miami El Clásico—despite the ticket prices, the absent players, the dyslexic welcomes, the fraught team tensions, the off-season non-competitive malaise, the underwear choices—is not such a bad thing after all. It is El Clásico on American shores after all. That's nice.

Try to adopt this attitude:

Next time just pray that the tickets won't cost more than a flight to Spain.