The Impact of the Saudi League on UEFA Champions League and European Football: Insights from Javier Tebas, President of LaLiga

Javier Tebas, president of LaLiga, referred today during the presentation of the salary limits for the first and second division of Spain, to the situation of the Saudi league and its possible intervention in the UEFA Champions League in the “medium term.”

“Today it is an issue that does not concern us, but it concerns us to know what is happening,” he said and admitted that “there is a risk that they want to play in the Champions League and make a payment that UEFA and the big clubs accept.”

In the last transfer market alone, Arab clubs spent 957 million euros on the incorporation of 277 players, 69 of them arrived from European championships.

“Even so, a great league is not made only with players, we have the example of China that, with investments sponsored by the Government, did not grow as a competition. We have also seen it when Cristiano Ronaldo left the Spanish League and went to Italy and income fell by 50%, or in France with Leo Messi, Neymar and Kilyan Mbappé,” he remarked.

The top leader of the Spanish tournament said that, despite the disbursements made, the Saudi league would not be “even among the top 20 in Europe” in the historical series, but that they monitor every week “aspects such as their attendance at stadiums and the audiovisual monitoring.

Javier Tebas, president of the Spanish LaLiga. (AP)

“We will see the evolution, we do not see it as a risk right now because they do not have the audiovisual rights sold in the United States and Africa either,” he commented.

Furthermore, Tebas compared “two opposite models” regarding the business plan of the major European national championships.

“One of them is sustainable, in which we are with the German Bundesliga, and another with losses with the English, Italian and French league,” he maintained and used the examples of American magnates and Arab sheikhs who serve as shareholders of large institutions.

“We lived it from 2008 to 2013,” he said and concluded: “we defend a model that is protected by those clubs that are not Sports Public Limited Companies, such as Real Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Athletic Club de Bilbao and Osasuna.”

Among the figures that make up the Saudi league today are the Brazilian forwards Neymar and Roberto Firmino, the Senegalese attacker Sadio Mané, the French N’Golo Kanté and Karim Benzemá, the Franco-Senegalese defender Kalidou Koulibaly and the Croatian midfielder, Marcelo Brozović, former captain of Inter Milan during the last Uefa Champions League.

2023-09-14 22:17:38
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