NFL Plays Final Game Of Its 2025 International Schedule In 'The China Of Europe'

The NFL is merrily celebrating its final international game of the 2025 regular season on Sunday with its matchup between the Miami Dolphins and Washington Commanders in Madrid, and if one is looking at the world exclusively through a sports lens, this merits celebration because it's the league's first game in Spain.

China Sees Spain As 'China Of Europe'

But not everything can be viewed exclusively through a sports lens, so you should probably know this:

What the NFL is also doing on Sunday is playing its first regular-season game in "The China of Europe."

That's not how I describe Spain, the country from which my ancestors, including my paternal grandparents come. That's how the Xinhua News Agency – the official Chinese Communist Party (CCP) news service – described Spain this week.

The NFL is playing in Europe but Spain's government has been led since 2018 by Chinese sympathizer Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who is the head of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping meets with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Bali, Indonesia, Nov. 15, 2022. (Photo by Zhang Ling/Xinhua via Getty Images)

Sánchez And Xi Like-Minded

And here's where we have to do some truth-telling because Spain basically lost its collective mind starting with the Inquisition, when for about 500 years it persecuted and expelled Jews in the name of Catholicism. 

More recently, it went to war against the United States in 1898. It conducted a civil war between the Adolf Hitler-backed fascists and the Josef Stalin-backed communists in the 1930s – which pulled off the rare feat of having both sides of a war represent totalitarian evil.

Spain sat out World War II altogether. And, although it is a NATO nation, it has been cozying up to China lately because Sánchez and Chinese Premier (he's a president like I'm a president) Xi are quite like-minded. 

Sánchez has made three official trips to communist China. During his time in office, as the Spanish blog Contando Estrellas (Counting Stars) notes, the Spanish socialist has never uttered even the slightest reproach for the genocide against the Uyghur people and against the Tibetan people, nor for the existence of the largest network of concentration camps in the world (the Laogai, which is the Chinese version of the old Soviet gulags).

Sánchez also has not said a word about the persecution against Christians and other religious groups. 

The national flags of China and Spain flutter at Tian'anmen Square on November 11, 2025 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Wang Xin/VCG via Getty Images)

Spain's King Visits China

"When it comes to discussing communist China and human rights," the blog states, Sánchez falls silent.

On Tuesday, by the way, the King and Queen of Spain began a state visit to communist China.

And that's when the Chinese press, which is only slightly more left-leaning than the mainstream American press not named Fox News, claimed Spain is an ally and friend and a country of "many shared traits."

Yeah, the two nations have governments of shared traits because they're both commies. But the people, at least my people? Not sharing traits.

And what does Spain moving inexorably closer to China's sphere of influence and "strengthening their comprehensive strategic partnership," as Xinhua states, have to do with the NFL?

The logo for the 2025 NFL game in Madrid, Spain during a press conference at the Mandalay Bay North Convention Center on February 9, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Don Juan Moore/Getty Images)

NFL Closer To China By Proxy

It means the NFL is, by proxy, moving closer to China's sphere of influence. And it's not doing that in Spain alone.

The NFL this year and last year played a regular-season game in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Next year the league will play a game in Rio De Janiero. The league has committed to at least three regular-season games over the next five years in Rio, starting with that 2026 game.

So, yes, the NFL loves Brazil.

"Brazil’s a very important market in helping to realize that global growth," Peter O'Reilly, NFL Executive Vice President, said last season before the game in São Paulo. "We’ve seen over the recent years the very engaged and very passionate fan base."

And I'm just wondering whether the NFL has seen how Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is steering his country? 

Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) shakes hands with Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva after a signing ceremony and a joint press conference, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 13, 2025. (Photo by TINGSHU WANG / POOL / AFP) (Photo by TINGSHU WANG/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

NFL Target Brazil Cozy With China

Lula, as his useful idiots call him, is the Worker's Party leader whose policy goals include redistribution of wealth, state participation in energy, banking, and infrastructure (wait until he nationalizes them), and other left-wing ideological initiatives.

China is Brazil's largest trade partner. That's right, Brazil is in our hemisphere, but they're trading most with the communist country half-a-world away. And, by the way, they largely exclude the U.S. dollar in the exchanges. 

Brazil, you see, joined the BRICS nations with China, Russia and India. The stated goal of BRICS is to become independent of the American dollar.

The actual goal of BRICS is to sideline the American currency – the one the NFL loves to collect by fleets of packed armored cars – and thus shrink the U.S. economy.

The Trump Administration views BRICS policies as "anti-American."

President Donald Trump. (Credit: Getty Images)

NFL's View Of Foreign Politics Unclear

"Any Country aligning themselves with the anti-American policies of BRICS will be charged an ADDITIONAL 10 percent Tariff. There will be no exceptions to this policy," President Donald Trump has said. "When I heard about this group from BRICS … basically, I hit them very, very hard. And if they ever really form in a meaningful way, it will end very quickly."

It's unclear to what degree the NFL cares about the political bent and climate of the nations where it is exporting its games. So far, the league has mostly resisted the temptation of publicly discussing games in China. 

But the China of Europe? That's fine.