La Liga president Javier Tebas has slammed the covert European Super League plan that “dissolved like a lump of sugar”.
Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid and Barcelona were the three Spanish clubs that signed up for the breakaway league, with Madrid and Barca still attached despite Atletico joining the majority of the founder clubs in withdrawing in the last two days.
Tebas said at a press conference: “These plans have dissolved like a lump of sugar. If it (the Super League) was good for football, as (Real Madrid president) Florentino Perez has said, they wouldn’t have done it behind our backs.”
“We are not talking about sanctions (from La Liga for the Spanish clubs).
“Everyone wants to cut people’s heads off. We have to have a procedure and we have to see how it looks in the end. These clubs have been sanctioned by their own fans.”
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‘Prick of the Week’ Perez admitted that he perhaps didn’t explain the project well but is still adamant European football requires reform.
“I’m quite sad and disappointed because we’ve been working on this project for around three years and maybe we’ve not been able to explain it well,” Perez told ‘El Larguero’ on Cadena SER.
“The Champions League format is old and only interesting from the quarter-finals onwards.
“This format clearly doesn’t work, so we thought that we could have a format where the most important teams in Europe play against each other from the very beginning of the season.
“We worked out the numbers and felt we could make much more money, more money for all the other teams too.”
Speaking about the English clubs deciding to pull out, Perez added: “There was one part of the English group that didn’t have much interest, I won’t say who. I think this became contagious with the others.
“These directors are mostly American, maybe from the NFL or NBA. They’re leaving because of the atmosphere.
“FIFA created a big spectacle. It was as if we had let off an atomic bomb. Maybe we didn’t explain it well, but they also didn’t give us an opportunity to explain it.
“Some people just didn’t want that. I’ve never seen such aggression from the president of UEFA and some of the countries’ footballing authorities.
“I’ve been in football for 20 years and I’ve never seen threats like this. It was like we killed someone. It was like we killed football. But, we were trying to work out how to save football.”
Perez added: “Nobody has yet paid the penalisation fee for leaving the SuperLeague. We are almost all still in this, they have not officially left yet.
“If this project didn’t work, another one will. Remember: all the 12 clubs have signed a biding contract”.
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