“They don’t happen, you know, all the time or a lot,” Tebas said about the racist episodes, “and they are mainly focused on Vinícius. And maybe that’s because Vinícius is leading a case against racism so that’s why we have these isolated events that attack him. So what La Liga is doing is to protect Vinícius as much as we possibly can.”
Tebas, a famously fiery character who holds major influence at the top of European football, has never been someone to back down easily — and he’s not starting now.
“There’s always lots of battles going on. But I will have as many battles as I need to have, if I think something is going to be detrimental for professional football,” he said in response to a question about whether he was mellowing.
Last summer, La Liga complained to the European Commission about the ownership of French club Paris Saint-Germain by Qatar Sports Investments, in one of the first tests for the Commission’s new foreign subsidies enforcers, a team which is currently staffing up. Tebas would prefer things were moving more quickly.
“We know that the European Union administration don’t go as fast as we would like, but we have to let them work,” he said of his foreign subsidies complaint over Qatar-PSG.
While his long-running feud with Qatar continues to simmer, Tebas is less concerned about Saudi Arabia’s move into football, where the top Saudi domestic league has been signing big-name players to huge contracts. The wealthy Gulf petromonarchy has also upended professional golf and wants to move into running world tennis amid a massive sports splurge by the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund (PIF).
2024-03-22 03:00:00
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