France’s football league has labelled the head of the Spanish league “undignified” after he accused Paris St Germain of “financial doping” and “peeing in the pool” over their purchase of Brazilian striker Neymar.
Spanish football league (LFP) president Javier Tebas had already lambasted Qatar-owned PSG and UAE-owned Manchester City on Monday, accusing them of being funded by state aid and circumventing Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules. Each club spent more than 200 million pounds in the last transfer window.
“We have caught PSG peeing in the bed or the pool. Neymar has climbed on to the diving board and peed into the pool. We cannot let them get away with this,” Tebas said at the Soccerex conference in Manchester.
“FFP doesn’t work until the damage is done. I told PSG that I will take them to court and they said: ‘I thought you were my friend.’
“According to their figures, Paris Saint-Germain have made more money from sponsorship than Manchester United. That is impossible. This is financial doping.”
He also said PSG, who signed Neymar from Barcelona for a world-record 222 million euro fee in August, were “laughing at the system”.
The French professional football league immediately defended PSG and said only UEFA could rule on whether clubs met fairplay rules.
“The league strongly condemns the insulting comments regarding PSG made today by the president of La Liga, Mr Javier Tebas,” it said in a statement.
“These undignified comments do not live up to the standards of an institution as respectable and high-performing as the Spanish league.”
It added that the league continued to back PSG in the face of a “campaign of negativity publicity by certain big European football clubs over the last few weeks”.
