La Liga president slams Premier League spending: 'British market is doped'

MADRID (AP) — Spanish league president Javier Tebas criticized the high spending of the Premier League clubs in the winter transfer window on Wednesday, saying the "British market is doped."

Tebas pointed to Chelsea's spending spree after the London club made almost half of the signings in the Premier League while spending about $225 million — more than every club in the top leagues in Spain, Italy, Germany and France combined.

"The Premier League is a competition that loses billions of pounds in the last few years," Tebas said. "And this is financed with contributions from the patrons, in this case large American investors who finance at a loss. This does not happen in the Spanish League and neither does it happen in the German League, especially those two."

Tebas noted Spain's strict control of economic sustainability by not allowing "contributions to cover losses in these barbaric amounts that are occurring, and that is what makes the difference in the market."

Tebas recognized that the English clubs have a higher turnover commercially "but not in the volume of this difference that there is."

"It is quite dangerous that the markets are doped, inflated, as has been happening in recent years in Europe, because that can jeopardize the sustainability of European football," Tebas said.

The Spanish league president, whose goal has been to cut into the Premier League's global dominance, said that "buying players at the price the Premiership buys them is inflationary buying."

He said the Spanish league still does well and noted that it recently had two Champions League semifinalists, as well as the Ballon d'Or winner in Real Madrid's Karim Benzema and the Golden Boy winner in Barcelona's Gavi.

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