Reports about FIFA plans to launch a professional football league in Europe – The European Football League – have stirred a hornet’s nest.
LaLiga President Javier Tebas has slammed the reported move by FIFA, the will drive away 18 leading professional football clubs for the proposed $6 billion European Football League.
Reports have surfaced that FIFA is planning the European Premier League with 18 leading clubs from the English Premier League, Spanish LaLiga, Itallian Serie A, French Lique1, German Bundesliga and other European football leagues.
Also read: Top Premier League Clubs in talks to join FIFA-backed pro league
La Liga president Javier Tebas, according to the goal.com, has dismissed the prospect of a breakaway European Premier League. He has termed the league proposal a product of “ignorance”.
“The authors of this idea, if they really exist because there is nobody actually defending it, not only show total ignorance of the organisation and customs of European and world football, but also a serious ignorance of the audiovisual rights markets,” he explained to ESPN when asked about the reported plans,” said Tebas.
“A project of this type will mean serious economic damage to the organisers themselves and to those entities that finance it, if they exist, because they’re never official. These ‘underground’ projects only look good when drafted at a bar at 5 in the morning.”
Opposition to the proposed league is reported from others as well.
“The big issue that I have with it, is that at this moment in time, in the middle of a pandemic and when football is on its knees at so many different levels, the idea that a $6bn package is being put together to set up a new league when lower clubs are scrambling around to pay wages and stay in existence,” said ex-Manchester United defender Gary Neville told Sky Sports.