Kings League: penalty taker presidents, fate cards and masked footballers. Ninety thousand at the Camp Nou – Calcio

Less rules, more show. The success of the company is based (and explained) on these principles Kings Leaguethe 7-a-side football competition created by the former Barcelona defender Gerard Piquein collaboration with Ibai Llanos, Spanish streamer with over 8 million followers on Instagram. The numbers are crazy: taking advantage of the break for the national teams, last Sunday more than 90 thousand (92,522 to be precise) were present in the stands of the Camp Nou to attend the Final Four of the game that could really revolutionize the world of football.

Cards and rules

The regulation is objectively bizarre, but not so complex to understand. The kick-off is in water polo style with the players starting from the baseline, it is played in two halves of twenty minutes, at the end of which there is no draw: in the event of a tie, it proceeds with penalty kicks in shoot-out mode. The protagonists are the 20 cards, drawn in advance by the coaches of the 12 teams, capable of modifying the progress of the game in progress. Of these twenty cards, six give the possibility that during two minutes any goal is worth double, another six allow the team to remove a player from the opponent (but not the goalkeeper), four offer the shoot-out, two the normal penalty, one is the “theft card”: you can snatch the card from your rivals and finally there is the joker, which gives you the possibility to choose from all the previous solutions. But that’s not all, because the presidents also get involved in the first person: if they were both present in the stadium, they would take the field to take a classic penalty. And again: in the 18th minute of the first half, the organizers may decide to halve the number of players on the pitch for two minutes: from 6 against 6, we move on to one against one. This option is not valid for the second half.

Var to call

In short, a series of rules that have nothing to do with traditional football, but which have made inroads with the public, especially the young one. On the other hand, people from home, in addition to following the event via Twitch, YouTibe and Tik Tok (Sunday there were more than one and a half million), can be protagonists in an interactive way, proposing new rules that will be evaluated directly by the 12 presidents of the club. Could have been missing Var? Absolutely not and, unlike Italian football, it can be called by the coaches. In addition, player substitutions are unlimited. And on the American style of the “business-show”, alongside the purely football competition, there are musical challenges between rappers ready to battle each other with notes and rhymes.

The public invokes Messi

There were therefore more than 90,000 at the Camp Nou in Barcelona last Sunday, who took the opportunity to sing several times the name of Leo Messi, hoping for a return “home” of the Flea. On the other hand, Spain had played the night before at “La Rosaleda” in Malaga, beating Norway 3-0 in the opening Euro 2024 qualifying match, and with La Liga at a standstill, the public had no doubts about what to choose. Piqué, then, is a master in this: during the last months of controversy with Shakira, who “dedicated” the world hit to him with the Argentine producer Bizarrap, the former Blaugrana defender, who retired last November, has always continued to publish posts exclusively on the Kings League on social networks. And we remember how in recent years he has contributed to introducing the traditional model of tennis into tennis Davis Cupproposing a more innovative direct confrontation format.

The masked footballer

On Sunday Piqué did everything to involve the public: he had the 12 presidents arrive by helicopter, who then entered aboard a golf-car. In the stands there were illustrious names such as the current president of Barça Laporta, former footballers such as Saviola, David Villa, Aguero and Casillas (the latter two are president of two teams) and connected in streaming there was also Neymar, so much so that there are rumors of an imminent competition also in Brazil. For sure there is that the female version with the is coming Queens League. Finally, to arouse the curiosity of the public has also arrived “Enigma“, a masked footballer whose identity has remained a mystery: it is rumored that he was a La Liga player who had not been authorized to participate and therefore presented himself with the image of a Mexican wrestler. Piqué knows one more of the devil.