Sunday Times (Sri Lanka)

Bar PSG from Champions League over FFP breach - Tebas

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MIAMI, Nov 17, 2018 (AFP) - Javier Tebas, the president of Spain's La Liga, said he wants UEFA to kick Paris SaintG e r main out of t he Champions League for breaking Financial Fair Play regulation­s.

Tebas said PSG should be expelled for at least "one year" after recent leaked documents implicated the French champions in violating financial rules.

The latest developmen­ts follow on from an investigat­ion in 2017 which looked into the $ 264 million signing of Neymar from Barcelona.

In September, European football's governing body UEFA said it had referred the accusation­s against the French giants to its financial unit "for further investigat­ion."

Manchester City, who are yet to be investigat­ed by soccer's European governing body, have also angered Tebas after they were accused of illegally obscuring spending following widespread reports of findings from the Football Leaks website.

"Two years we started talking and complainin­g about cheating, they should have already done things," Tebas told AFP at the Soccerex conference in Miami on Thursday.

"Football Leaks has shown that UEFA have not done the right thing. And with the informatio­n we have now, the clubs must be sanctioned.

"For PSG, because of their recurring issues, they should be pushed out of the Champions League for at least one season.

"It's not my objective to have them kicked out. The objective is that people follow the rules and stick to FFP."

Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the PSG President, has dismissed any allegation­s of wrongdoing and rejects claims about attempting to avoid serious FFP sanctions.

Both the Qatari-backed PSG and Abu Dhab i - owned Manchester City reached settlement­s with the UEFA Club Financial Control Body in May 2014 following breaches.

Tebas added: "UEFA have to look at this quickly. In fact, they should already have done something, they should have done something two years ago. They are already delayed.

"I don't know as much about Manchester City and they haven't been looked at as closely by UEFA. But with PSG it's clear they haven't shown the real numbers in regards to their sponsorshi­ps and so their sanction should be exclusion from the Champions League."

Manchester City officials maintain their innocence and stress the Football Leaks revelation­s are an attempt to rubbish their name in world football.

"There should be an investigat­ion into Manchester City by UEFA to see if what has emerged from Football Leaks is true," countered Tebas who remains confident his plans of staging a La Liga game in Miami between Barcelona and Girona early next year will come to fruition.

 ??  ?? La Liga President Javier Tebas
La Liga President Javier Tebas

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