Football
ESPN staff 7y

La Liga chief wants UEFA to investigate Manchester City's transfer spending

La Liga wants UEFA to investigate Manchester City's spending and expand its newly launched probe into whether Paris Saint-Germain have breached financial fair play rules.

Spanish league president Javier Tebas said in a statement to The Associated Press on Monday that Abu Dhabi-funded City and Qatari-owned PSG are benefitting from state aid which distorts European competitions and "is irreparably harming the football industry."

Tebas wrote separate letters to European football's governing body on Aug. 22 requesting investigations into Man City and PSG.

Despite the requests, UEFA has confirmed that City are not being investigated.

Contacted by ESPN FC, UEFA said: "There is no investigation into Manchester City with regards to Financial Fair Play regulations. Any reports mentioning such an investigation are unsubstantiated."

City have not commented on the matter but Press Assocation Sport reported the club are not concerned, and do not believe they are even close to breaching regulations. That would also have been the case had they succeeded in their deadline-day bid for Alexis Sanchez last week.

UEFA said on Friday it would look into whether PSG was flouting rules designed to control excessive spending by top European clubs, though it did not say if the probe began because of Tebas' request to look into "PSG's history of noncompliance."

Both PSG and City spent hundreds of millions in the transfer window that closed last week, and the Spanish league claims the teams "benefit from sponsorships that make no economic sense and lack any fair value."

Tebas said: "PSG and Man City's funding by state-aid distorts European competitions and creates an inflationary spiral that is irreparably harming the football industry.

"UEFA must enforce FFP regulations to avoid discrimination among clubs."

In 2014, PSG and City were the main targets of the first round of FFP sanctions. Both had €20 million of their Champions League prize money deducted and had limits imposed on their spending and squad size for matches.

Then, UEFA judges told PSG that a sponsorship deal with Qatar's tourism authority had been inflated above fair market value to help the club comply with the rules.

It was only in April that UEFA declared that PSG had fulfilled its obligations of stricter ongoing scrutiny.

"PSG is a habitual offender and has been violating UEFA's financial fair play regulations for years," Tebas said. "It is important that UEFA doesn't just look at the most recent player transfers, but at PSG's history of noncompliance. The transfers are merely the result of years of financial doping at PSG."

UEFA's club finance monitoring panel intervened last week to open a fresh investigation into PSG after the French club broke the world record fee to sign Neymar from Barcelona for €222m and on Thursday signed Monaco forward Kylian Mbappe.

The deal for the 18-year-old Mbappe was unusual as a one-season loan with a commitment to pay a reported €180m next year, delaying PSG's financial commitment to the deal. 

City, meanwhile, spent more than £200m on Bernardo Silva, Ederson, Kyle Walker, Danilo and Benjamin Mendy to bolster a squad that already featured many expensive signings.

They offered Arsenal £55m up front for the Chile forward on Thursday but a deal failed to materialise.

Information from the ESPN FC's MAnchester City correspondent, Jonathan Smith, , the Associated Press and Press Association Sport was used in this report.

^ Back to Top ^