Athletic Club and Real Madrid will go down the wire at King Fahd Stadium in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in the Final of the 2021-22 Spanish Super Cup on Sunday, January 16, 2022, at 1:30 PM (ET). This will only be their second Supercopa de España meeting.

Interestingly, Athletic Club are the slight favorites in head-to-head clashes, having celebrated a victory on their sole occasion so far; Real Madrid are surprisingly yet to grab a triumph to this day, and no matches have ended in a draw.

Their lone Spanish Super Cup encounter took place on January 14, 2021, when the Basque shocked the Whites with a 2-1 win in the 2020-21 Semi-Finals. It promises to be an even more exciting clash as they meet again in the competition exactly a year later, this time to determine the new Supercopa de España winner.

Will there be VAR in the 2022 Spanish Super Cup Final?

There will be VAR in the 2022 Spanish Super Cup Final, and it will operate as it does in the UEFA Champions League. The VAR room, where VAR officials watch the match visuals, will not be in the sports facility of Ciudad del Futbol de Las Rozas in Las Rozas de Madrid, as it is for La LigaMobile squads will be stationed on the ends of each stadium to carry out the operation, just like in the case of the UCL.

This is an unusual practice for Spain, but it is mostly prompted by the fact that stadiums like the Estadio Nuevo Arcangel in Cordoba and La Cartuja in Seville have never been arbitrated with the technology and are not equipped to link directly with the video operation room. Therefore mobile units must be used.

The Spanish Super Cup has returned to Saudi Arabia for the first time since 2020. However, for the 2022 Supercopa de España edition, the goal-line technology has been discarded. The Hawkeye technology is efficient and effective, but Spanish publication Diario AS suggests that it costs a lot, and it requires 14 unique sets of cameras, which the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) believes is superfluous.