La Liga president claims Messi and Ronaldo’s exit did not hurt the league, compares Barcelona and Real Madrid’s finances

La Liga president Javier Tebas has never shied away from speaking his mind to media outlets and has once again touched upon matters related to FC Barcelona.

His comments on Barcelona’s situations have not always been well-received at the club, though.

Indeed, Barcelona demanded in a statement last year that the La Liga president resign after he attempted to implicate the club in wrongdoing.

However, he was re-elected towards the end of last year, which means Tebas will remain in charge up until 2027, and Barcelona simply has no choice but to find common ground for now.

Speaking about the Catalans’ financial situation, Tebas affirmed that the club has the required means to navigate its way through these troubling times.

“It interests me, but it doesn’t worry me because I know that the club has mechanisms that will allow it to get out of the situation it’s in,” he stated, as quoted by AS.

Talking about Barcelona living life on the edge with their salary caps, Tebas compared Barcelona’s approach with Real Madrid, stating:

“Barcelona has always had the habit of going to the maximum of the salary cap imposed by La Liga.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic came, revenues dropped dramatically, which did not happen with salaries, the contracts were for several years with players, and the club could not reach agreements to revise them, and the result was that the costs did not adapt to the drop in revenues.

“Other clubs were able to do that, yes, Real Madrid’s management, for example, never went as far as they could go, they were more cautious, and that gave them space to control the situation when the crisis happened.”

When asked to comment on why La Liga corrected Joao Felix’s contract to €4 million while Barcelona stated that he would receive €400,000, he said:

“We don’t care about the value that clubs put in contracts, we have our own criteria to calculate the salary that is in line with the player’s value for the purposes of economic control.

“Of course, we were surprised that a big player like João Felix could get that salary, it was too low, and so we decided to raise it to the amount that seemed more realistic to us.“

Tebas was also asked how the departure or Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo impacted the league, to which he replied, “They didn’t cause any damage because we didn’t shrink, but with them we would surely have grown faster.

“The French league with Messi, Neymar and Mbappé did not grow, Cristiano Ronaldo went to Italy and the international income of the Italian league did not increase, ours did although we lost both.

“The reason is that, both sponsors and audiovisual media, what matters most to them is that the competition is economically sustainable, that seven years later it continues to be very competitive and that in Spain there are always very good players.

“This year we have the best in the world, which is Bellingham, last season Lewandowski was at a great level, Atletico has Griezmann, if Mbappé comes that will help us to be more competitive and grow even faster.“

Comparing La Liga with the Premier League, he added:

“By adding up the budgets of all the teams in the top division, the total budget of the Premier League is 1.8 times bigger than La Liga, but we are in a sector where not everything is economics, there is also the sporting aspect, and in this aspect, our European history has excelled in recent years.

“We have won 60% of the titles, in the current Champions League, there are four Spanish teams and two English teams, what we have to see in football is a balance between the two aspects, sporting and economic, in the first aspect we are better, in the second the Premier League wins.”