Defiance In Spain

In an act of petulance, Real Betis has ignored the Spanish FA's competition comittee and scheduled this weekend's match against Barcelona at their home stadium, the Manuel Ruiz de Lopera. As you may recall, this goes against a FA ruling that Betis be penalized with a two match stadium ban after the bottle throwing incident against Athletic Bilbao on March 15th. While on the surface it seems that the club's board is playing word games with the FA, there seems to be a little kernal of precedent on the Seville club's side.

Betis, after the ban was announced, appealed the ruling. But since the FA doesn't get together until Thursday, two days before the scheduled match against Barça, it'll be too late to schedule another venue and get the ticket sale up and running. Last year, when Betis were banned from playing at home for the incident that saw Juande Ramos knocked out during a cup match, the FA failed to confirm the competition committee's ruling until two weeks after the match against Sevilla. Thus, until the FA confirm or deny the stadium ban, the games should go on at Betis' home ground.

While this seems to throw some of the blame for this clusterfuck back at FA for it's archaic meeting schedule, Betis knows it's still in the doghouse. The club is threatening to take it's cause to the streets, organizing a march in support of leniency. After seeing the extent of what happened to the Athletic keeper, I say Betis should shut up, accept their punishment, and breathe a huge sigh of relief that it wasn't worse.

El Betis anuncia que el partido contra el Barcelona será en el Ruiz de Lopera (in Spanish) [Marca]
El Betis quiere manifestarse en la calle como medida de presión (in Spanish) [El País]

-ac