Financial doping is European football’s biggest problem, proclaims Javier Tebas

The Deloitte report sees Spanish clubs Barcelona and Real Madrid top the list with combined earnings of €1.6 billion with the former becoming the first club to cross the €800 million mark. That is cause for concern all over but what has shocked a few even more is that Manchester United sit third with Manchester City and PSG slowly catching up to them.

That saw Tebas take a subtle dig at the two clubs owned by wealthy Middle Eastern companies and the La Liga president went on to admit that clubs being financed by states have caused problems to the hierarchy. He also added that countries that have strict economic controls are at a massive disadvantage and that is something that European football has to take a look at and level the playing field.

“One of the major issues in European football is related to doping. Because when we have clubs being financed by states, then that has an impact on salaries. That means in other countries with more strict economic controls like Spain and Germany clubs cannot actually ask the state for extra financing to pay those salaries,” he said at the launch of LaLiga TV.

“Organisations and institutions have a responsibility to redistribute the wealth that we generate. All of us, the Spanish league, the Premier League, UEFA, FIFA. I don’t think we are helping football in any way if we generate wealth and it just goes straight back to the big clubs. In the end instead of having 12 Ferraris, they have 15. We’re dealing with major clubs generating a huge amount of money. So our aim is to redistribute that wealth,” he added.