Real Madrid to Rejoin European Football Clubs Association

Nasser Al Khelaifi, the head of the European Football Clubs, used the association's general assembly in Copenhagen to announce that Real Madrid are coming back into the fold. "Real Madrid will return to the European Football Clubs," he told delegates from the floor of the Bella Center.

The move closes the rift opened by the Super League in 2021, when twelve clubs broke away, Real Madrid among them under club president Florentino Perez. Juventus and Barcelona had already rejoined the EFC; Real Madrid's return leaves the project without a single member still outside the fold. The EFC itself has just passed 900 affiliated clubs.

A year ago, at the assembly in Rome, Al-Khelaifi and Barcelona's Joan Laporta sealed an earlier truce with a public embrace. Laporta was in the room again on Wednesday. The disputes behind the split were as much commercial as political, and the launch of UC3, the joint venture through which Europe's leading clubs now manage the television rights to UEFA's competitions and share in the higher revenue it brings, removed much of the friction.

Al-Khelaifi then turned to UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin, seated in the front row, and asked him to seek another term. "I ask you, on behalf of the EFC, to stand again for the leadership of UEFA in 2027," he said. Ceferin had indicated this would be his last spell in charge at Nyon, though he had already changed UEFA's rules to allow himself one further mandate if he chose to use it.

Ceferin used the same platform to criticise FIFA president Gianni Infantino. "Enough, he wants to sell football," he said, adding: "Football is not for sale."

Al-Khelaifi's appeal, made in public and in front of the assembly, makes a further Ceferin candidacy in 2027 look more likely than his earlier statements suggested.