Javier Tebas says the tournament is creating a “competitiveness problem” and “damaging the calendar”
La Liga president Javier Tebas has vowed to put an end to FIFA’s expanded Club World Cup, describing the tournament as a threat to competition at the domestic level and saying it is disrupting the calendar for all teams.
“I will do everything possible to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” Tebas told Mundo Deportivo. “The Club World Cup has created a competitiveness problem with the money that goes to those clubs involved. The competition is damaging the calendar for all teams.”
Two Spanish clubs participated in the summer tournament in the United States: Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid. Atletico’s early group-stage exit has allowed Diego Simeone’s side to return to Spain and resume pre-season planning with minimal interference.
Real Madrid, by contrast, have proceeded to the quarter-finals and remain among the favourites to reach the final in New York on 13 July.
Should they go the distance, Madrid’s players will have had no real break in-between two seasons. They would have just over a month between a potential Club World Cup triumph and their La Liga opener against Osasuna on 17 August.
Tebas was adamant that Madrid’s fixture would not be moved: “They ask for more days to rest, but they can earn €140m from the Club World Cup, double Alaves’s budget, and then ask for time to prepare.”
Tebas has spoken against the extended Club World Cup since its inception. When asked last month how FIFA could better structure the tournament, he said “by eliminating it”.
“There is no room for it,” he said at the time. “We have to maintain the ecosystem we have already and eliminate it.
“Keep [the Club World Cup] as it was before, when it was played basically over one weekend and that was that. There are no available dates.”
