La Liga director bemoans ‘cheating’ Premier League clubs after ‘barbaric’ winter spending | OneFootball

La Liga corporate director Javier Gomez has accused the Premier League of “cheating” after clubs spent a combined $1billion (£815million) in January.

Chelsea were the busiest side in world football in the winter transfer window, spending a whopping £296.3m on eight players.

Their deadline day signing of Enzo Fernandez was a British record at £106.8m, eclipsing Jack Grealish’s £100m move from Aston Villa to Manchester City in 2021.

This sort of spending has not gone down well with La Liga president Javier Tebas, as well as the league’s corporate director Javier Gomez.

Tebas has had plenty to say about the spending of Premier League clubs over the years, saying last September that he would go to UEFA to tattletale.

And following the conclusion of the January transfer window, Tebas has gone on another rant.

“The British market is a doped market. You can see it clearly in this winter market where Chelsea have made almost half of the signings in the Premier League,” Tebas said, as reported by Ben Jacobs.

“Following the history of the last few seasons, we have done some work on La Liga because [the Premier League] has lost billions of pounds in the last few years.

“And this is financed with contributions from the patrons, in this case large American investors who finance at a loss.

“This does not happen in the Spanish league and neither does it happen in the German league.

“In our control of economic sustainability we do not allow contributions to cover losses in these barbaric amounts that are occurring, and that is what makes the difference in the market.

“We have to recognise that commercially they have a higher turnover than us, but not in the volume of this difference.

“It is quite dangerous that the markets are doped, inflated, as has been happening in recent years… that can jeopardise the sustainability of European football.

“We should not get really obsessed with the question of whether the Premier League pays much more.

“You have to know the cause, it is a problem. But I am happy because our clubs are economically sustainable and that means that we have a future for many years to come.”

Tebas saying La Liga clubs are “economically sustainable” and will “have a future for many years to come” is pretty f***ing funny, to be fair. Has he just decided to ignore everything that has gone on at Barcelona in the last three years?

Gomez went one further, accusing the Premier League of “cheating”.

He said: “We are aware there is a lot of talk about how La Liga’s economic control means Spanish clubs sign less than Premier League clubs.

“The reality is that at La Liga we want clubs to spend what they can afford and generate themselves, that is to say their own revenues.

“It is true that shareholders are also allowed to support the club and put money in to spend more than the club itself can generate, but within certain limits.

“Essentially, [in England] they are ‘doping’ the club. They are injecting money not generated by the club for it to spend, which puts the viability of the club at risk if the shareholder leaves.

“In our opinion, that is cheating, because it drags down the rest of the leagues.

“That is our fight, demanding that UEFA implements a new economic regulation that prevents the shareholder of a club from putting in more than a certain amount and that it enforces this rule and sanctions non-compliant clubs.”