La Liga president Javier Tebas has launched another attack on Manchester City, making a claim over their ability to sign Erling Haaland and confirming he has made a formal complaint to UEFA against the Blues.
Tebas is a long-standing critic of City and their financial model, despite the club being cleared at the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2020 after UEFA charged them with breaching Financial Fair Play regulations.
Now, he has confirmed he sent a formal complaint to UEFA against City and Paris Saint-Germain as he also took aim at City's signing of Haaland for £51m from Borussia Dortmund.
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City paid Haaland's release clause, with the total expenditure set to rise higher due to wages and agent fees, beating competition from Real Madrid among others. However, the fee is less than Barcelona paid City for Ferran Torres in January, with Tebas also omitting other expensive signings to La Liga in recent years.
Speaking to Marca, Tebas said: "[City] must have done something, because Haaland asked the clubs for more apart from the 60 million that have been paid.
"PSG is going to end up with losses of 200 million, it has already been dragging 300... and they go and renew Mbappé with those amounts. They are going to have to cheat, I don't know if paying outside the French environment or fattening up the sponsorships a lot, which they already do."
In his official complaint against PSG this week, La Liga confirmed they had raised a similar issue with UEFA in April against City, and didn't rule out adding to both formal complaints.
"LaLiga this week filed a complaint with UEFA against PSG, which will join another against Manchester City in April, for understanding that these clubs are continuously breaching the current financial fair play regulations," the complaint reads.
"LaLiga considers that these practices alter the ecosystem and the sustainability of football, harm all European clubs and leagues, and only serve to artificially inflate the market, with money not generated in football itself.
"LaLiga understands that the irregular financing of these clubs is carried out, either through direct injections of money or through sponsorship and other contracts that do not correspond to market conditions or make economic sense.
"The complaints against Manchester City before UEFA were made in April and this last week the one corresponding to PSG has been presented, although it is not ruled out that in the coming days extensions of some of these complaints will be made with the contributions of new data.
"Additionally, LaLiga has contracted law firms in France and Switzerland, including the French firm of lawyer Juan Branco, with the aim of undertaking administrative and judicial actions before the competent French bodies and before the European Union as soon as possible.
"In Switzerland, LaLiga is studying different representation options due to possible conflicts of interest of Nasser Al-Khelaïfi derived from his different roles in PSG, UEFA, ECA and BeIN Sports.
"It is not the first time that LaLiga has denounced these anti-competitive practices before UEFA. The Spanish organization has always led the defense of economic control. In 2017 and 2018, he filed briefs with UEFA against PSG and Manchester City for infringing financial fair play, which resulted in sanctions by UEFA against both "state clubs", although they were later annulled due to strange CAS decisions.
"The complaints from LaLiga, as well as the statements that the association of Spanish clubs has been making in recent times in this regard, are made based on data and after a detailed monitoring and analysis of the audited accounts of the clubs."
City have always staunchly defended themselves against Tebas' complaints, and won their appeal against the two-year ban imposed on them by FIFA over alleged FFP breaches.
Regarding these latest comments, City had no new response, but chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak has previously challenged Tebas' 'hypocrytical' comments in 2019, saying: “He talks about how we distorted the market? There is a hypocrisy in this statement that is ironic.
"You know, the history, you have to look back at the history of La Liga, a league dominated by two clubs and Mr Tebas should look back at the history of that league and how distortion that has happened throughout the ages.
"And then you look back at transfers. In the top ten transfers of all time, Manchester City has not a single player in that, not a single one. So I don’t really take it seriously and I ask our fans to always put it in context.
"Always look at facts. And I think people with glass homes shouldn’t be throwing rocks. I’m happy to talk to anyone as long as the conversation is about facts but once we start talking about innuendo and talking about theories I have no time for that.”
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