Real Madrid President ‘Bad For Football’ And Sports, Says La Liga Chief

Real Madrid president Florentino Perez is “bad for football” according to his La Liga counterpart Javier Tebas, who stated this during an interview with SPORT.

Two of the most powerful men in the Spanish game have been at loggerheads for years now over issues such as the CVD deal and the thus far failed European Super League.

Prompted to discuss their conflict with Catalan newspaper SPORT, Tebas stated that “Florentino is bad for football; for European football, for clubs, for other sports and for other issues”.

Tebas noted that “26 countries have signed against the Super League model, but Spain hasn’t”.

“And we have seen that an opposition party asked what the government is going to do to defend the clubs that want to play in the Super League. Few in the world achieve that, that the government and the opposition support a model that is against the clubs.”

In Tebas’ view, the proposed breakaway Super League “is not a competition format, but a concept that emerged in 2002 with the G14 that was also promoted by Florentino Perez”.

“As long as Florentino is at the helm of Real Madrid, the Super League is not dead. It is something that occupies me and worries me. Because it is not a question of discussing a competition model, what is serious is governance.”

Tebas noted how Perez often promises money in solidarity to those interested in joining the Super League “as if we were in feudal Europe” and have to “pay tithes” to a lord.

“It is like leaving a country in the hands of financial institutions, that we are governed by the banks,” Tebas claimed.

“Real Madrid are opposed to everything, but they don’t convince anyone. He lost that battle in April 2021 [when the Super League folded], and they have not managed to overcome it.”

Tebas underlined opposition to the model that the Super League preaches, which sees “that the rich rule” and which Perez has decided “must be imposed”.

“He will try to achieve it before leaving the presidency of Madrid. But there has been a very strong opposition in La Liga and in its president, who does not shut up, who fights it, says it and I will say it as many times as necessary.

All this aside, Tebas, a known Madrid fan, insists he has nothing against what it is a “great club”.

“I give its managers a ten, it is a perfectly managed club. But it is one thing to manage the club and another to impose your ideas on the organisation of football.

“The fact of winning the Champions League does not mean that you are a ‘champion’ deciding how football has to be organised, in this case quite the opposite. European football rejects the ideas of Florentino Perez, but he doesn’t see it,” Tebas concluded on this.

On why others refrain from speaking badly about Perez, Tebas said this is “because leaving the comfort zone and criticizing one of the most powerful men in this country is complicated”.

“I admit it. I don’t ask for heroes, I am not one either. It is not easy. I don’t need to go into much detail on that. You live in Spain and you know what I’m talking about,” he added.