Gerard Pique's influence under scrutiny after expanding beyond Barca to Super Cup

In the second week of January 2023, the Spanish Super Cup will kick off in what is now its established venue in Saudi Arabia, under its new format - two semi-finals and a final. Invited are the top two finishers in the previous season’s Liga and Copa del Rey.

It remains to be seen if that includes both Spain’s pre-eminent clubs.

Real Madrid will be there, almost certainly, as 2022 Spanish champions. The cup finalists Valencia and Real Betis have their places. But if Barcelona do not finish second in La Liga, where they are in a tight jostle to finish as runners-up to Madrid, they will not be entitled to participate.

That would mean a loss of important income for Barca from a lucrative event but, it has emerged this week, not so damaging financially for their defender Gerard Pique, whose involvement in the staging of the Super Cup extends well beyond whether or not he’s there.

The multi-talented Pique is president and executive adviser to the successful sports and media company, Kosmos Holdings, who brokered the deal between the Spanish Football Federation and the Saudi-based SELA Sport group for the long-term staging of the expanded Super Cup.

Kosmos, it was revealed this week, received a commission worth around €24 million ($26m) for the six-year agreement, starting in 2019, to host it in Saudi Arabia. All of that commission was paid to Kosmos by the Saudi organisers.

There is no suggestion of any impropriety from the Saudi end of the deal, but various disclosures this week by the El Confidencial platform, including reported audio conversations between Pique, acting on behalf of Kosmos, and the president of the Spanish Federation, Luis Rubiales, have put the relationship between the Barca player and the governing body