MY ACCOUNT
LaLiga chief Javier Tebas continued his feud with Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City, explaining the complaint to UEFA over financial fair play was to defend competition.
City were the subject of the first LaLiga complaint back in April, while the league lodged another against PSG on Wednesday regarding breaching financial fair play rulings.
The latter complaint continued Tebas’ most recent conflict with the Ligue 1 side, who managed to keep World Cup winner Kylian Mbappe in Paris despite persistent interest from Real Madrid.
Tebas claimed the agreement between PSG and Mbappe was “an insult to football”, promising to denounce the French side in court before duly obliging and filing to European football’s governing body.
LaLiga cited practices “altering the ecosystem and the sustainability of football” and “only serving to artificially inflate the market with money not generated in football itself”.
Tebas, speaking at the Club Consultative Platform (CAP) meeting on Thursday, reiterated his frustrations with PSG and suggested his actions were in the interest of football.
“Do the clubs or the leagues have a responsibility towards our hierarchically superior institutions?” he said. “Am I obliged to report when I consider that there are irregularities?
“I think so, and that is also governance. If we looked the other way in matters of economic control and the cheating that is done, we would breach our governance rules.
“We want the competition to be as clean as possible and these clubs do a lot of damage to economic control.”
PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi was also referenced in the LaLiga complaint, with a conflict of interests cited due to his role as European Club Association chairman and his responsibilities as the organisation’s delegate to UEFA’s executive committee.
Tebas insists the complaint was not solely in the interests of LaLiga, but also for the benefit of European football.
“[There is] a clear conflict of interest,” he added. “He is a buyer of UEFA rights, we have to denounce him.
“We are not doing it to defend the Spanish clubs, who have enough with our most demanding economic control, we are doing it to safeguard the ecosystem of European football, which is in danger.”
Madrid president Florentino Perez indicated his hopes for a European Super League are still alive earlier in the week, with the judicial process still ongoing.
Juventus and Barcelona are the other two teams harbouring ambitions of a breakaway league, and Tebas says they are right to do so as UEFA and domestic leagues cannot govern over state-run clubs.
“The three clubs in the Super League are trying to strengthen themselves, rightly so, with this argument, they say that UEFA is not capable of fighting against the state clubs and they accuse them, on occasions, of coexistence,” he continued.
“For this reason, these state clubs do a lot of damage to the football ecosystem, because they compete unfairly, with an inflating impact in terms of salaries, and question the credibility of UEFA and the financial control system.
“That is why it is important to denounce it and say it clearly.”
