Tebas Fires at Premier League FFP, PSG 'Joke' Leadership, and Prestianni Racism Row
LaLiga chief Javier Tebas held court at the FT Business Football Summit in London, sounding off on FFP, racism, and the Super League fallout.
Javier Tebas rocked up to London this week and didn’t exactly hold back. Speaking at the Financial Times Business Football Summit, the LaLiga president had plenty to say — about the Premier League’s new financial rules, the Prestianni-Vinicius racism row, and why the idea of PSG leading European financial fair play is, in his own words, laughable.
The Premier League Money Gap Is Just… Real
Tebas was pretty blunt about one thing: LaLiga simply cannot compete with the Premier League economically, and no amount of clever rule-tweaking is going to change that.
- The Premier League’s revenue — excluding transfers — is roughly double that of both LaLiga and the Bundesliga
- The PL’s incoming FFP overhaul will cap spending at 85% of revenues across wages, transfers, and agent fees
- Tebas reckons this new system ignores expenditure entirely, which he says makes it essentially useless
His worry is that without proper market value benchmarks being established, football heads down the same road as Italian football in the 90s or Spanish football in the early 2000s — clubs cooking up inflated prices between themselves and creating a financial house of cards. Sound familiar, anyone?
He also had a pop at Aston Villa and Everton for selling their women’s teams to associated companies owned by the same owners — a move he sees as gaming the system to reduce reported losses. “We’re fooling ourselves,” was the gist of it.
On the Prestianni-Vinicius Situation
Tebas was asked directly about the alleged racist abuse directed at Vinicius Júnior by Benfica’s Gianluca Prestianni. His position was clear:
“If the player made a racist insult, he must be sanctioned.”
He extended that to homophobic and hate-based abuse too, saying none of it can be tolerated — not in the stands, not outside the ground, and absolutely not between players on the pitch.
On the broader racism picture in Spain, Tebas pointed to what he sees as genuine progress — citing the incident involving Lamine Yamal at the Bernabéu as a recent example, but arguing the overall trend is downward. LaLiga has pursued criminal action in four cases involving racist chanting from supporters, and he says they’ll keep going.
PSG Leading FFP? Pull the Other One
Perhaps the most spicy bit of the whole afternoon was Tebas laying into the idea that PSG — or their chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi — could credibly lead European football’s financial governance.
His argument, roughly:
- PSG spent a decade doing whatever they liked financially
- Now, suddenly, they want to be the responsible adults in the room
- Meanwhile, LaLiga were the ones in the courts defending UEFA when the Super League chaos kicked off in 2021 — not ECA (now EFC), not PSG, nobody else
He was also narked about the recent agreement between Real Madrid, UEFA and EFC — which LaLiga apparently only found out about on the morning it was announced. He’s not saying it’s necessarily bad, but he wants transparency, and right now there isn’t any.
Asked whether Florentino Pérez might try to launch another breakaway competition down the line, Tebas was characteristically dry: “I don’t know if it’ll be Florentino or Al-Khelaifi — I genuinely can’t decide.”
Fair to say the man didn’t come to London to make mates.