Real Madrid will still play Chelsea in the semi-final of the Champions League after UEFA decided to keep the La Liga giants in the competition.
Real president Florentino Perez is one of the major drivers behind the controversial European Super League project which was unveiled last week Sunday.
But the plan for the breakaway league was met with widespread backlash from supporters, while UEFA chiefs discussed the idea of banning Madrid, Chelsea and Man City from the Champions League semi-final ties.
According to reports in Spain on Friday, UEFA have decided that they do not have the power to expel the Spanish side from the Champions League competition due to legal and television rights issues.
But UEFA is believed to be considering a future punishment for Real Madrid if the club move on with their push to create a European Super League. Madrid will now host the blues in the first leg of their semi-final tie next Tuesday.
Chelsea and Manchester City confirmed this week that they have pulled out of the Super League after the widespread disapproval.
But Perez has insisted that Madrid are not giving up hope on the breakaway league, which ‘If anyone thinks the Super League is dead, are they wrong? Absolutely,’ Perez told Spanish radio show El Larguero this week.
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‘We’re going to keep working and what everyone thinks is for the best will emerge. ‘The project is on standby. The Super League still exists.
‘I’m a bit sad and disappointed because we’ve been working on this project for three years. ‘There was someone in the group of six English teams who wasn’t that interested and I think that started to become contagious among the others.
‘There are people of a certain age involved and maybe they were scared because they didn’t understand anything that was going on. We all signed a binding contract, but I don’t think that one of them was ever convinced.
‘In the end, there was an onslaught from the leagues and the Premier League got fired up, so they said, ‘we’ll leave it for now’.’
