Real Madrid have issued a statement commenting on FIFA's decision to reverse a proposal to sell part of the commercial rights to FIFA tournaments, particularly the World Cup.
Los Blancos welcomed the U-turn in a statement on their official website, saying the move had pleased millions of fans around the world.
The club also thanked every continental and national federation that had firmly opposed the plan. "International football and the World Cup represent, above all, events of public interest, and they constitute a heritage that belongs to nations, to fans and to society as a whole, and therefore they should never be treated as mere financial assets that can be marketed to achieve gains for a limited group," the statement read.
Clubs, Los Merengues argued, are the foundation on which national team football and the World Cup are built. They discover, develop and nurture the players before releasing them to the national teams that compete in these major tournaments.
Madrid made clear that they strongly oppose any attempt to sell off the future commercial revenues of the competitions without shouldering any of the costs or risks that come with them.
"Any initiative aimed at seizing football's future revenues without bearing the responsibilities that result from them is unacceptable, and it should never be proposed again in any form," they affirmed.
This, the club added, is the same principle they defended at home. Real Madrid previously refused to join the deal struck by the Spanish league, which pledged a percentage of the clubs' future television broadcasting revenues for 50 years in exchange for the entry of private investment fund CVC.
Notably, the statement stopped at praising FIFA's decision. It offered no word of thanks to FIFA president Gianni Infantino for reversing the controversial proposal.