Real Madrid and Barcelona find common causes as La Liga prepares for kick off

Barely had Real Madrid been handed their fourth trophy of the calendar year after Wednesday’s capture of the Uefa Super Cup than their president, Florentino Perez, was lavishing praise on the enemy.

“Barcelona,” Perez told reporters in Helsinki after Madrid had beaten Eintracht Frankfurt 2-0, “are one of the great world institutions. To see them back to what they were is a good thing for everyone, for Spanish football and world football.”

Some madridistas winced at those words; many barcelonistas listened with suspicion. But the fact is the most fabled rivalry in club sport is in a very contradictory phase. On the pitch, Madrid are lording it, having just won a fourth Champions League within the seven-year period since Barcelona last triumphed in the competition. They topped La Liga in May with a 13-point advantage over Barca.

Off the pitch, though, Perez and his counterpart Joan Laporta are, privately, as close as they ever have been through their many years - both presidents are serving second mandates - jostling for supremacy. They are firm allies in pushing the idea of a breakaway European Super League. They share advice on how to maximise the potential of the club’s brands, and how to keep up with the financial muscle of emerging football superpowers elsewhere.

So when La Liga’s new season kicks off this weekend, Perez will genuinely want Barcelona, who meet Rayo Vallecano at Camp Nou, to have met the pressing, anxious deadlines for registering new players that have caused Laporta headaches over the past few days. Barcelona’s well-documented problems with steepling debts and an oversized salary bill have put them at risk of breaching La Liga’s budgetary controls, mechanisms that oblige clubs to observe a strict