French Ligue 1 club, Paris Saint Germain (PSG) fired back at the president of Spanish La Liga, Javier Tebas for criticizing their signing of Lionel Messi and Sergio Ramos. The French club urged Tebas to focus on solving the many problems in the Spanish league instead of attacking the operations of PSG.
Recently, Javier Tebas told a press conference that PSG are as harmful to football as the failed European Super League due to the way they spend heavily on signing aged players.
The Spanish football administrator described PSG as a league of legends in reference to the signing of 34-year-old Lionel Messi from FC Barcelona and 35-year-old Sergio Ramos from Real Madrid.
Javier Tebas also wondered how PSG managed to conform with UEFA’s financial fair play despite spending so much on the wages of footballers.
He went on to attack the whole of French Ligue 1 stressing that, unlike the French league, La Liga clubs have younger players like 21-year-old Vinicius Junior of Real Madrid.
“PSG looks like the league of legends given the age of some players. La Liga has young players like Vinicius (Junior). The problem of PSG, we will solve. What PSG are doing is as dangerous as the Super League,” Tebas said.
“We will continue to grow despite the departure of Messi. We will work against the club states. These clubs are as many enemies as the Super League.”
PSG and French football governing body LFP reactions to Javier Tebas’ comments
Over the years, Spanish La Liga has been one of the three leading leagues in Europe (La Liga, Premier League, Serie A) because of how heavily their clubs spend on recruiting world-class players.
But in recent times especially the summers of 2020 and 2021, the two major clubs in the league – Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, have decided to control the way they spend on players.
Their decision to minimize the way they spend is because the two clubs are in serious debt running over a billion dollars respectively.
Due to the high level of debts and the fact that they could not conform to the financial fair play rule, a club like FC Barcelona had to allow Lionel Messi to leave and sent Antoine Griezmann back to Atletico Madrid.
Also, FC Barcelona had to ask their players to accept a pay cut to enable them to register their new signings all because of their past ambitious spending.
Aside from that, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona are among the three European clubs (the third club is Juventus) that are still trying to create a breakaway league known as European Super League.
The motive behind the breakaway league is to raise money to service the club’s debts and run the clubs as smoothly as it was before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hence, PSG general secretary Victoriano Melero wrote a letter to La Liga president Javier Tebas urging him to focus on the many problems confronting Spanish club football.
Melero urged Tebas to stop attacking PSG, the French league, and the players. He also urged him to try to find a solution to the financial mismanagement affecting clubs in La Liga.
“Time after time, you allow yourself to publicly attack the French League, our club, our players together with players of other clubs and the fans of French football; while constantly posting insulting and defamatory statements insinuating that we do not conform to the football financial regulations, amongst other unsubstantiated statements,” Melero wrote in a letter on Wednesday.
“The French League did not, like your league, wait until recent years to take actions and put in place strong financial regulations,” he insisted.
“It is now publicly known that certain Spanish clubs and your league are facing unsustainable levels of debt after gross mismanagement, not to mention the way Spanish football has been financed over the past decade including by the State…
“Your remarkable comments on the age of these players not only insult their past and current roles in defining how our great game is played but also the millions of fans around the world who idolize them.
“I am quite surprised you are not focusing more of your attention on the two clubs in your league that remain steadfastly focused on breaking up your league, and European football as a whole.
“We invite you to focus on solving your domestic issues, which you are responsible for, and to stop your transparent and repeated diversion attempts.”
In the same vein, a statement from the French football governing body, LFP also urged Javier Tebas to stop attacking PSG and focus on the problems in Spanish club football.
“The LFP asks Mr. Javier Tebas to watch his outrageous statements,” which were “not worthy of the institution he represents,” the LFP said in a statement.
“However, the LFP wishes to point out that the financial largesse from which Spanish clubs have benefited for many seasons and which is at the root of the current problems, is neither its responsibility nor that of Paris St Germain.”
