Football: More English 'super-debt' clubs breaching financial rules, says La Liga's Tebas

MADRID – La Liga president Javier Tebas believes other English Premier League clubs in addition to Manchester City are guilty of breaching financial regulations.

City were charged last week with more than 100 breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules after a four-year investigation, with potential punishments including points deduction or even expulsion from the top flight.

Tebas assumes other sides in the league are also guilty of similar offences, especially after English top-flight clubs spent heavily during the mid-season transfer window

Chelsea broke the British transfer record by signing Enzo Fernandez from Benfica for €121 million (S$173 million), while English teams accounted for nearly 80 per cent of all the top five European leagues’ January business.

“I criticised Manchester City (in 2017), saying everything that now they are going to continue to investigate,” Tebas said.

“I said it then in 2017, so what surprises me is that it takes so long to make this kind of decision, because we are talking about facts from as far back as 2010.

“This is the problem you have in football, that when you detect a problem, some cheating, (but) it takes so long to react.”

But he does not think the charges will herald a new era of financial control in England.

“I am sceptical because I know that it is not only Manchester City that have similar problems,” he said. “There are other Premier League clubs that have also breached their financial regulations and the league is not acting as it should have been.”

He also insisted that a potential European Super League would not be a clever way of competing with the Premier League’s riches.

Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus attempted to launch a Super League project in April 2021 with nine other clubs, including six Premier League sides, but the project fell apart amid heavy criticism from fans, football governing bodies and their respective governments.

Last week, A22 Sports Management, a company promoting the Super League, published a statement after talks with football stakeholders, suggesting a multi-division Super League with about 60 to 80 clubs could be created.

Tebas dismissed the idea that the Premier League is a de facto Super League, an argument used by some in favour of a European Super League to rival it.

“When the Super League says that the Premier League is a Super League, they are wrong, it is a super-trap, it is super-debt, it is super-losses of clubs every season, that is what the Premier League has become,” he said. AFP