“So this is the catapult they’ll use to propel the dice onto the field. Over there, that’s the cannon they fire the ball from, to start the match. And then, for the final, there will be a tightrope walker who drops the ball from over the centre of the pitch.”
FourFourTwo have arrived pitchside at Atletico Madrid’s impressive Metropolitano home and things have already taken a turn for the weird. We are speaking to Alberto Lambea, our helpful guide for the finals event of the Kings and Queens Leagues. Set up by Barcelona stalwart Gerard Pique, it is akin to The Hundred, only even more outlandish than its cricket equivalent.
The seven-a-side football tournament, which features legends of the game, social media stars and every daft idea you could possibly think of, has become a massive hit in the Spanish-speaking world since its launch on January 1. Less than three months later, it had grown so enormous that 92,522 spectators crammed into the Camp Nou to watch its first finals day, despite the players on the pitch previously being virtual unknowns.
Tomorrow, the Metropolitano will be close to capacity for an eight-hour, six-match epic, including performances from pop stars and a penalty shootout with Iker Casillas.
Before then, we’re here to meet Pique himself, who retired from playing last November after a career that gave him a World Cup, a European Championship, four Champions Leagues, nine La Liga titles – the lot. The 36-year-old could have just put his feet up. Instead, he has ploughed his focus into Kosmos Holding, the company he founded in 2017 with a group of businessmen including the head of Japanese firm Rakuten, then Barcelona’s shirt sponsor.
A year later, they agreed a deal worth more than £2 billion to transform tennis’ Davis Cup from its conventional format into an 18-team finals event in Madrid. That endured mixed success, and the partnership was cut short this January. Kosmos also helped to convert Spanish football’s Super Cup into a four-team contest, played in Saudi Arabia.
Given the traditions of both events, those moves were controversial, but Kosmos hasinvolves players from 32 countries trying to stop a balloon from hitting the floor. “The day we came up with that, it was like we were high!” Pique recalls to us, laughing. “That was a new sport we created after seeing a viral video between two brothers in the US. We’ve already done two World Cups and this year we’re thinking about maybe a third.”
