Madrid (AFP)

A Spanish Super Cup? Ticket sales for the new Spanish Super Cup, contested in Saudi Arabia from Wednesday to Sunday, have been a resounding failure in Spain: only 9% of tickets intended for the Spanish public have been sold, according to the daily El Mundo.

"The Spanish Super Cup, which starts on Wednesday, will have a predominantly local audience, because among the 12,000 tickets available to clubs for their supporters, only 9.05% of them have found takers," El Mundo revealed on Monday.

"Nobody wants to go to the Spanish Super Cup," even headlined the Spanish daily on its site.

In detail, the newspaper specifies that Real Madrid sold 700 tickets, FC Barcelona 300, Atlético Madrid 50 and Valencia, the most modest of the four clubs in the running, only 26. Figures not disputed by members of the Spanish football federation present in Jeddah.

However, the 62,000 seats at the King Abdullah stadium in Jeddah, where the matches will take place, are already sold out for the semi-final between Barça and Atlético on Thursday (19:00 GMT).

It will undoubtedly be the same for the first semi-final between Valencia and Real Madrid (Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. GMT), for which there are still 10,000 tickets on sale Monday evening (including unsold items returned by the clubs).

Ditto for the final Sunday, for which 35,000 seats had already been sold Monday evening, according to a press release from the Federation.

"The Spanish Super Cup has become a veritable mass phenomenon in Saudi Arabia", did not hesitate to proclaim the federation in this same press release.

"There will be very few Spanish supporters in the stands," said Marca, the country's best-selling daily, on Tuesday, however.

The lack of attractiveness of the competition, the time of year (just after January 6, the day of the Three Kings holiday in Spain), the 10-hour flight and the 6,400 km that separate Madrid from Jeddah have discouraged most of the fans.

But the main obstacle is economic: according to Efigenio Albaladejo, president of the group of supporters of Real Madrid Ramon Mendoza, of which 17 of the 450 members made the trip, "the trip is very expensive, almost 3,000 euros per person," he said. he entrusted to Marca, although the price of the tickets is relatively affordable (from 25 to 37 euros per match).

© 2020 AFP