Javier Tebas sees the Manchester City case as another front in a war he has fought for years: the defence of financial oversight and equal application of the rules. The La Liga president spoke out after reports that the club had been found guilty on most of the charges relating to breaches of the Premier League's financial regulations. The case remains in its legal stages, with Manchester City expected to appeal.
Taking to his social media accounts, Tebas dusted off a stance he first adopted in 2017. He was, he claims, among the first officials to speak publicly about the financial model at City and Paris Saint-Germain, and about what he considered a reliance on huge external resources far exceeding the revenues those clubs generated through their usual activity.
Tebas said: "In September 2017, during the Soccerex conference in Manchester, I publicly denounced something that had been troubling me for some time: the so-called financial manipulation in European football. I spoke about Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, and about clubs whose financial strength stemmed not only from their usual activities, but also from the backing of huge external resources."
City hit back at the time. The club dismissed his statements as "not based on correct information" and "mere fiction", and announced they were studying legal action against him.
The La Liga president also revisited UEFA's punishment of City in February 2020, when the governing body banned the club for two seasons and fined it 30 million euros. The Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned the exclusion that July, while cutting the financial penalty to 10 million euros over the club's lack of cooperation with UEFA's investigations.
That ruling marked a turning point for Tebas. "I never agreed with that strange ruling," he said. "For me, it represented a turning point in the credibility of the Court of Arbitration for Sport as an independent arbitration body in the sporting field."
He went on: "I thought it was a very wrong decision, one that unusually harmed the credibility of the economic oversight system of European football, and that is difficult to reconcile with a principle I consider fundamental: the same rules must apply to everyone."
His comments follow reports that an independent Premier League commission found Manchester City guilty on 114 of 115 charges. The club insist the proceedings are still ongoing, with important elements unresolved, and are expected to enter the appeal stage.
This is not about being proved right, Tebas stressed. "When I recall that intervention in 2017 and everything that followed, I do not do so to say: I warned you. I do it because this story is the best embodiment of a battle I have been waging for years."
His vision, he explained, rests on building a competition around clubs' ability to manage their resources and generate revenues, rather than the size of the financial backing they receive. "Economic sustainability is not bureaucracy, and financial control is not a passing whim," he added.
Tebas signed off with a warning that the fight is far from won. "The road is still long. The sanction has not yet been determined, and the proceedings have not ended, but what has happened shows once again the importance of economic oversight, transparency and equality in the application of the rules to protect the integrity and sustainability of football."