June 15 – LaLiga’s war on what it sees as state-owned clubs financially unbalancing the European club eco-system has been taken a step further with the Spanish League filing acomplaint with UEFA against PSG who LaLiga maintains is “in continuous breach of the current financial fair play rules”.
LaLiga filed the same complaint against Manchester City in April. The league said that it expects to broaden its complaint with new information in the coming weeks and that the data it is basing its allegations on is compiled from “detailed monitoring and analysis of the auditedaccounts of the two clubs.”
“LaLiga understands that the irregular financing of these clubs is carried out either throughdirect injections of money or through sponsorship and other contracts that do not correspond tomarket conditions and do not make economic sense,” said a LaLiga statement.
The league said it has hired law firms in France and Switzerland to take “administrative and legal action before the relevant bodies in France and the European Union as soon as possible.”
LaLiga in its statement also recognised that it was going up against one of European football’s heavyweight leaders in Nasser Al-Khelaïfi who not only manages the club for the Qataris but is also chair of the European Club Association and sits on UEFA’s executive committee. Al-Khelaïfi is also chairman of beIN Media Group, one of the world’s biggest buyer of football rights worldwide.
UEFA has always brushed off allegations that Al-Khelaïfi’s multiple roles lead to clear conflicts of interest.
“In Switzerland, LaLiga is looking into different representation options due to possibleconflicts of interest for Nasser Al-Khelaïfi arising from his various roles at PSG, UEFA, theECA and BeIN Sports,” said the LaLiga statement.
It also referenced previous complaints in 2017 and 2018 against the two clubs for breaches of financial fair play that resulted in sanctions. However those sanctions were “subsequentlyoverturned by bizarre CAS rulings”.
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