La Liga chief says Super League ‘dead’, calls for lower spending

London - All six English clubs which signed up to play in the breakaway league on Sunday promptly withdrew

The proposed European Super League is ‘dead’ without the support of teams in England and Germany, La Liga president Javier Tebas said on Thursday, also calling for the biggest clubs to reduce their spending to combat their current financial problems.

All six English clubs which signed up to the breakaway league on Sunday promptly withdrew and were swiftly joined by Inter Milan and Atletico Madrid. German clubs including deposed Champions League holders Bayern Munich never agreed to join.

Real Madrid president Florentino Perez has insisted the project is not finished and could be presented again in a different format but Tebas, a long-time opponent of the Super League, said it was effectively doomed.

“The Super League is dead without the English and German teams, let’s be realistic, it’s dead,” Tebas told a virtual news conference on Thursday.

“They cannot create the project they want to create. After 20 years of threatening a Super League, finally this threat came true and in 48 hours it has disappeared.”

Perez said the Super League was urgently needed to prevent top clubs from going bankrupt after their revenues were badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic and clubs being unable to sell match tickets or merchandise.

But Tebas said the situation was not as extreme as Perez suggested it was, saying the clubs who have been crippled financially merely needed to control their spending on wages and transfer fees.

“This isn’t a problem of revenue, these clubs need to reduce their expenses. We don’t need to keep increasing earnings so that players can have seven Ferraris instead of six,” he said.

“This is a problem of distribution. My position is very clear, we don’t need to increase revenues, we just need to manage expenses. We are not ruined financially and we don’t have to take any exceptional measures.”