La Liga asks UEFA to investigate City
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, September 5, 2017
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PSG investigated over Financial Fair Play. |
La Liga wants UEFA to investigate Manchester City's spending and expand its newly-launched probe into whether Paris Saint-Germain has breached Financial Fair Play rules.
Spanish league president Javier Tebas said in a statement on Monday that Abu Dhabi-funded City and Qatari-owned PSG are benefiting from state aid which distorts European competitions and "is irreparably harming the football industry".
Tebas wrote separate letters to European soccer's governing body on August 22 requesting investigation into City and PSG.
UEFA said on Friday it would look into whether PSG was flouting rules designed to control excessive spending by top European clubs. Tebas wants UEFA to go further and look into "PSG's history of non-compliance".
Both City and PSG spent hundreds of millions of dollars 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" to help them comply with FFP.
Ultimately, clubs breaching rules can be banned from playing in the UEFA Champions League or Europa League.
"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," Tebas said.
In 2014, PSG and City were the main targets of the first round of FFP sanctions. Both had 20 million euros (US$24 million) of their UCL 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.
But Tebas said both City and PSG are still trying to evade spending rules intended to ensure clubs break even.
"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 non-compliance. 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 222 million euros and last Thursday signed Monaco forward Kylian Mbappe.
The deal for Mbappe, 18, was unusual as a one-season loan with a commitment to pay a reported 180 million euros next year, delaying PSG's financial commitment to the deal.
City was the biggest spending club in the recent transfer window, with an outlay exceeding 220 million pounds (US$285 million). The purchase of defenders Kyle Walker (Tottenham Hotspur) and Benjamin Mendy (Monaco) accounted for about 100 million pounds of the spending.
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