By Andrew Warshaw
My 27 – In one of his most strongly-worded anti-European Super League outbursts to date, even by his own standards, the boss of La Liga, Javier Tebas, took aim once again today at the orchestrators of the aborted project as well as at Gianni Infantino who he accused of “secretly” supporting the idea.
Giving the opening address at a high-profile summit in Madrid organised by the European Leagues umbrella group and involving over 300 participants – some in person, others by video-conference – Tebas, in trademark style, did not mince his words as he lambasted the ESL founding clubs for treating leagues and other clubs like “stupid naive puppets”.
“Today I am going to say what I think and what I believe,” Tebas told his audience before launching into a barrage of criticism against the audacity of the remaining ESL renegades and Infantino’s alleged complicity.
“We shouldn’t hide, we shouldn’t be worried about what is politically correct,” said Tebas as he took Real Madrid, Juventus, Barcelona and the FIFA president to task.
“The danger is not just the words of these big clubs that failed, it’s also the words of the president of FIFA,” Tebas said who time and again stressed the need for sporting principle to be respected.
Warning the Super League was still not dead, Tebas, who is also a UEFA executive committee member, said European football did not need lessons from Real president Florentino Pérez, Barcelona’s Joan Laporta and Juventus’ Andrea Agnelli, declaring he would support any UEFA sanctions against them.
Speaking in Perez’s backyard, he declared: “They think that we are totally naïve and stupid,” denouncing the three clubs, who are being investigated by UEFA for potentially breaking disciplinary regulations, as “complete failures”.
“Their boat is half-sunk but they want to give us lessons on how to modernise football. Do they think they are cleverer than we are? The fact that they have won a lot of titles does not mean that they are smarter than a lot of the leagues and a lot of the clubs in Europe.”
Last week Infantino re-iterated “once and for all” that he and FIFA were totally against a breakaway league. He admitted that he had spoken to many clubs as part of his normal dutiesbut clarified there was a big difference between that and plotting behind the scenes.
Tebas didn’t buy that argument, implying collusion and declaring Infantino should not have kept any meetings secret, whether they were conducted in person or on the phone.
Tebas remains convinced, however panaroid he might appear, that Infantino played a crucial part in the discussions which ultimately led to the foundation of the breakaway grouping.
“Of course the president can talk to who he wants, and be with who he wants to talk about whatever. What we’re talking about is the football institutions and his loyalty,” Tebas told the Club Advisory Platform of the European Leagues.
“If he is being shown a format of a Super League – and a closed Super League – as soon as he had finished meeting with those clubs the first thing he should have done was to ring the president of UEFA, and all the leagues that would have been affected by it. He shouldn’t have kept it secret. The Super League ideology is now within FIFA. It’s as if they also believe in it.”
At a press conference following the summit, Tebas took up the same theme.
“We know what’s happened,” he told reporters. “I know FIFA has met the ideologists behind the super league. And I know those involved were convinced that FIFA was behind the project.”
Tebas claimed there was no doubt Infantino wanted the Super League to succeed in order to make the soon-to-be expanded Club World Cup, the FIFA president’s pet project, financially viable.
“He supported it because his Club World Cup was going to be played with the big clubs who had guaranteed they would participate.”
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