La Liga president Javier Tebas has hit out at the ‘dangerous’ spending of Premier League clubs and has called English football ‘a doped market’.
England’s top clubs again flexed their financial muscle during the January transfer window, spending more than £720m on new additions last month.
Chelsea were the heaviest spenders in the market, bringing eight new additions including the British transfer record arrival of Enzo Fernandez from Benfica.
The west London club’s individual spend was more than the rest of Europe’s top five leagues combined and Tebas has hit out at the Premier League, claiming the ‘dangerous’ spending of English clubs could ‘jeopardise the sustainability of European football’.
“The British market is a doped market,” Tebas said on Twitter. “You can see it clearly in this winter market, where Chelsea have made almost half of the signings in the Premier League.
“It is quite dangerous that the markets are doped, inflated, as has been happening in recent years in Europe, because that can jeopardise the sustainability of European football.
“I am happy because our clubs are economically sustainable, and that means that we have a future for many years to come.”
Tebas shared a video, in which a La Liga’s Corporate Director Javier Gomez discussed the ‘cheating’ of English clubs.
“In La Liga what we are looking for is that clubs spend what they can generate autonomously. Shareholders are allowed to support within certain limits,” Gomez said.
“In the Premier League it is the opposite. Until June 2021, the Premiership and the Championship had lost €3,000 million ($3.28 billion), the Spanish La Liga lost €250 million. In the same period, the Premier League and Championship shareholders put in €3,500 million, in Spain they put in €450 million.
“They are doping the clubs, they are injecting money that is not generated by the clubs. This puts the viability of a club at risk when this shareholder leaves. In our opinion, this is cheating because it drags down the rest of the leagues.”
