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Tebas is the La Liga chief trying to knock the EPL off its perch

  /  autty

If Jose Mourinho needs a way out of Manchester United in the next few months it sounds like the president of the Spanish League would welcome him back to Madrid with open arms.

Asked if he misses Cristiano Ronaldo’s presence in La Liga, Javier Tebas says: ‘I would like to have all the best players and all the best managers. I would like to have Mourinho and [Pep] Guardiola for example.’

You sense Tebas might have an affinity with Mourinho – he’s confrontational, not bothered about making enemies. He has upset Paris Saint Germain and Manchester City in the past and he continues his crusade against what he refers to as ‘state clubs’.

He says he doesn’t miss Ronaldo. ‘We have worked to make La Liga’s brand above any one player or club. Four years ago him leaving would have worried me, on a scale of one to ten, I would have said nine. Now it worries me, on a scale of one to ten, four, or even three.’

And on the subject of Ronaldo and the importance of top players to a league he adds: ‘If we follow the strategy of the Premier League they haven’t had a Ballon d’Or since Michael Owen and he is now playing the ‘Legends’ circuit.

‘And they have not had a lot of players in the ideal 11 of FifPro either but it keeps on being the league that generates the most income in the world.

‘And that shows that if you have a brand which is what the Premier League has, then it’s not necessary to have the best players to have the best league in the world.’

Sounds like the blueprint for a post-Ronaldo and Lionel Messi La Liga. In the week in which England will face Spain, the man whose job description could easily be ‘knocking the Premier League off its global perch’ has invited Sportsmail into his skyscraper office in the business heart of Madrid.

He has ruffled feathers in Spain with plans for a La Liga fixture between Girona and Barcelona in Miami and he remains as determined as ever to ensure Uefa apply Financial Fair Play (FFP) to the letter.

Spanish clubs have been accused of illegal state assistance in the past. Real Madrid were ordered to pay back around 18m euros in 2016 when the European Commission ruled that Madrid Council had bought land from the club at an artificially inflated price.

‘Madrid was an isolated point,’ Tebas says. ‘It was not a PSG or a Manchester City. In the case of PSG and Manchester City we are talking about hundreds of millions of euros during five years.

‘One thing has nothing to do with the other. What worries me is that they don’t put a limit on these state-clubs and if they don’t put a limit on this inflation of the market, football will fall in the not too distant future.’

He’s determined to the point of turning to the European Union although he says: ‘It cannot sanction PSG because it [Qatar] is not a state inside the EU. It is Uefa that needs to act. And it is to them that we have directed the appropriate complaints.’

But he goes on: ‘In the case of PSG it’s not just them receiving state help. They make sponsorship agreements that are false; the economic quantities [involved] are not real.

‘I think the EU could get involved and if UEFA don’t take action to impose a penalty on PSG then we will have to go the EU.

‘They cheat. It’s nothing new. I’ve said it before. The Uefa appeals committee has reopened the case [against PSG] saying clearly that the corrections made to the values of their sponsor deals have to be bigger. They have recognized that the values of the sponsor deals have been inflated.’

Does he have friends in the Premier League who share his concerns?

‘I have not concerned myself with looking for friends,’ he says. ‘I know that there are clubs that don’t like what’s happening but as happens in the world of football they find it hard to take a step forward.

‘In this sector they always say: “No, let the other guy do it so he gets the flak”. In private a lot of English clubs tell me they don’t like this at all.’

What does he say to the theory that FFP only serves the interests of football’s ‘old money’? Isn’t it just protectionism that would not exist in other sectors?

‘Just because I’m rich I can’t set up a new supermarket and start giving away chickens and steaks. That’s called dumping and it’s prohibited. You can’t sell at a loss. That is why they inflate the sponsor deals because they know they cannot be in permanent loss. That is why they declare more income than they really have. You can’t say: we are going to cheat to compete.’

Can it be taken for granted that Tebas does not fancy a Champions League final between PSG and Manchester City?

‘They will have to play it in Qatar or Dubai,’ he says. ‘It wouldn’t worry me that much. What worries me is what is happening in the football industry because perhaps they could reach the final without cheating; it can be that they are great clubs.’

There does seem some softening towards City. ‘The television deal for the Premier League is at such a high level and that makes Manchester City very competitive,’ he says.

‘And you have to say that they have done a much better job, in terms of the brand, but not to the degree to be the team that has made more signings over the last five years than anyone else in Europe.

‘It does not give them enough for that level. So although it’s less than PSG it has to be corrected. But they are in the Premier League and the Premier generates more money than the French league.’

The Premier League’s income and La Liga’s attempt to play catch-up has provoked Tebas trying to take Girona v Barcelona to Miami.

It’s an old Premier League idea so why did he not want to copy it in full and propose a whole round of fixtures?

‘Because I saw how that failed,’ he says. ‘To take all the teams is very difficult. I think that just one game is simpler.’

He puts the resistance to the idea down to ‘sporting puritanism’.

It is suggested to him that if Barcelona beat Girona in front of 50,000 Barcelona fans at the Hard Rock Stadium and end up winning the league by a point, their rivals could easily cry foul because they never had to go to Girona’s 15,000-capacity Montilivi Stadium.

‘It’s like saying: If one team plays Champions League games on Tuesday and another on Wednesday then one team is less tired and they could win the league by one point because of it,’ he says. ‘Football is not mathematical.’

It is true there is no science to whether playing Girona down the road or flying 5,000 miles to face them would be easier or not. But the match would still distort the time-honoured symmetry of the league calendar. Would the fleeting presence of Messi in Miami really do so much for La Liga that it is worth tearing up tradition?

‘It does have an effect,’ Tebas insists. ‘If you take an official game to another country, a game that really matters with three points at stake and that intensity and passion, then that has an effect that will last a long time.’

He might get beaten to the punch by an altogether easier game to organize outside of its territory. ‘I’m sure that in the not too distant future a Champions League final will be played outside of Europe,’ he says. ‘No one can stop the globalization of football.’