La Liga chief to report Premier League to UEFA for ‘unsustainable spending’
La Liga president Javier Tebas is preparing a report for UEFA in which he will bemoan the spending disparity between the Premier League and various other European leagues after English teams outspent their Spanish rivals more than 20 times over during the summer transfer window.
Premier League teams forked out close to £2 billion ($2.3 billion) in transfer fees during the summer months, with the likes of Erling Haaland, Darwin Nunez, Antony and Lisandro Martinez joining the English top flight from European clubs at great expense, while Chelsea's summer outlay of £273 million ($317 million) broke the world record for the most money spent by a single club in a transfer window.
Even newly-promoted Nottingham Forest spent close to £150 million ($174 million) - a sum which dwarves the vast majority of even Europe's most traditionally powerful clubs, as 13 of the of the top 20 most aggressively spending teams in Europe hailed from the Premier League.
And with Barcelona the only club in Spain to have charted in the top 20 for summer transfer spend, Tebas has hit out what he claims is an uneven playing field when it comes to financial clout.
“Premier League revenues are 1.8 times more than La Liga or Bundesliga but this negative amount is 20 times more than the Spanish league which has very good financial control,” Tebas said in a presentation on spending limits in Spanish football.
“Something doesn’t make sense there, so what’s happening? There’s a lot of checkbooks coming out from clubs like Manchester City that sign a certain amount of players. Even the Championship lost €3 billion (£2.6 billion) over five years. The contributions of capital from club owners from Premier League clubs to compensate losses compared to La Liga.
“I know the Premier League has a model to limit losses to £108 million ($125 million), do we want unsustainable models? What happens if the owners stop spending the money? We could let the sheiks and big companies come in here to buy out clubs. PSG can get more gas whenever they need to buy more players or use a related business.
“The football industry has changed and there’s much more money. If there’s no control then we could endanger the industry itself. The two competitions that are the most sustainable are La Liga and the Bundesliga and we have to really fight for sustainability.
“10 years ago we weren’t like the Bundesliga but we are now. We’re going to put all this to UEFA and it is important for all the other European leagues as we want sustainable European football.”
Spending limits within La Liga have proved to be costly for Spanish powerhouse Barcelona who were forced to sell off intellectual property to comply with the league's strict spending controls, but even after auctioning off various TV rights - which they referred to as 'levers' - the club came close to be unable to register some of their seven summer signings due to financial concerns.
And Tebas adds that the financial model he has implemented in Spain will ensure the financial health of its clubs, after the likes of Chelsea, Nottingham Forest and West Ham United were placed on a UEFA 'watchlist' - a situation which could lead to fines and even suspensions from European competition if their finances are not reined in.
“We’ve had a pandemic so it is impossible for them to do that if they didn’t have contributions from the owner’s checkbooks,” he said. “If in Spain we did that, let everything go and let rich people buy our clubs then that’s an option but we would rather have a sustainable league like the Bundesliga.
“We know what our football is about. We don’t want our clubs getting high debts so they can buy players. In our league, this is not allowed. This is the model we defend.”
