'The Super League is already here – and it's in England': How Europe reacted to Chelsea's spending

The head of Spain’s Liga, Javier Tebas, has renewed his attack on the Premier League by claiming that the English game is “economically doped” after another record transfer window.

English clubs shattered their record for January spending with around £800 million lavished on new signings, accounting for 79 per cent of the spend across the top five leagues in Europe, including Spain. Chelsea’s total spend of £291.7m, the biggest single outlay by any club in January, and greater than the €255m cumulative total in Italy, Spain, Germany and France.

The effect of Covid and other factors continues to bite in Europe where clubs in the other big five leagues saw spending fall, from €396m in January last year. Tebas claimed that the “losses” of the Premier League were unsustainable. The Liga chief executive has raised around £1.7 billion by selling a share of future broadcast and commercial rights of all but five of the 42 clubs in the top two divisions to private equity.

The 50-year “Boost Liga” deal has divided clubs and further alienated Real Madrid and Barcelona who have chosen not to participate but have entered into their own rights sales. Barcelona have sold €700m of future income streams in the last 12 months alone. Neither clubs’ president attends Liga shareholder meetings and the relationship with Tebas is fractious.

Tebas tweeted: “We read about the strength of the Premier League but it is not like that. It is a competition based on clubs’ multi-millionaire losses (their ordinary income is not enough for them). Most of the clubs are "economically doped".

The Liga corporate director, Javier Gomez, said in a video on the official Liga Twitter feed that Uefa had to double-down on what he said was “cheating” of financial fair play rules by English clubs. Gomez said: “English clubs are basically 'doping' [the finances]. They are injecting money that is not earned by the club for spending, which risks the club’s solvency. In our opinion, that is cheating, because it has a knock-on effect for the other leagues.”

'Premier League clubs will just laugh in your face'

By Marcus Alves (Portugal)

It was not Enzo Fernandez. Not even Pedro Porro. No, the main topic of discussion on Portuguese TV late on deadline day was the future of Braga wonderkid Vitinha.

The controversy? Nobody could really understand how the striker could have chosen Marseille to continue his career when he apparently had offers from Brighton, Crystal Palace and Southampton.

It did not matter that, of all four teams, Marseille are, traditionally, the biggest. There was just one question that needed to be answered: how dare he refuse the chance to play in the Premier League? It was as if nobody in their right mind could say no to that.

That’s the current state of things and probably there’s nothing much other leagues can do about it. The 22-year-old has clearly been an exception in this winter transfer window, but, for every Vitinha, there will be a Fernandez, a Porro and a Darwin Nunez. Some have highlighted the fact – and taken pride in it – that the Portuguese teams keep producing sought-after talents by English clubs, but at the end of the day it is obviously frustrating to realise that a player like Enzo may only be around for six months.

After that? There is nothing you can do to stop the big names from leaving so soon. Not even raising release clauses to numbers we once thought untouchable. These days, Premier League clubs will just laugh in your face – and then buy your players.

The general feeling in Portugal is that clubs are fighting a fight that they cannot win. Either because English teams will keep throwing money in your direction or because – and you have to accept this fact – that players want to be competing in the best league of the world.

Before swapping Buenos Aires for Lisbon in July 2022, Enzo told journalists that Benfica would be a “trampoline” to get to a bigger club and he has been true to his word. Once Chelsea came knocking, the Argentine midfielder did all in his power to make sure that he secured his dream move, much to the angst of the fans.

When Benfica announced that no player would be allowed to spend New Year’s Eve overseas, he did just the opposite and flew to his homeland anyway. Then he missed the first training sessions of 2023. And did it once again as the transfer window neared its end. Even after signing with the Blues, he did not care if he got coach Roger Schmidt’s name wrongly spelled in his farewell message on social media.

His heart had long been set on a Premier League move.

“That Enzo Fernandez moved to Portugal in the first place was already a good piece of work by Benfica, especially considering all the European clubs that were circling him at the time. So losing him would happen soon or later because, if you allow me to say, Enzo doesn’t belong to this league”, said CNN pundit Sofia Oliveira.

Enzo did not. And neither did players that Benfica have either produced in their famous Seixal academy such as Joao Felix, Bernardo Silva and Ruben Dias, or recruited elsewhere like Ederson, Angel Di Maria and David Luiz. And it does not look like that the current Uefa Youth League champions will stop here.

In the likes of Alexander Bah, Antonio Silva, Florentino Luis and Goncalo Ramos, the Portuguese giants have the sort of talent that will make other English sides come knocking soon. It is a case of when, not if.

Despite the longtime dream of conquering Europe again, fans know, deep in their hearts, they just cannot get too attached to players.

Enzo has not been the first to leave after making such an instant impact and certainly will not be the last one with the Premier League threat as big as it has ever been. The Super League is already here.

'The Super League is already here – and it's in England'

By Dani Gil (Spain)

Spain looks to the Premier League with frustration and impotence. La Liga has become a kind of quarry for English clubs. The winter transfer window has shown that Chelsea, Tottenham and even other more ‘humble’ clubs such as Nottingham Forest are able to take advantage of their enormous financial capacity to take great players who want to improve the terms of their contract.

There is no single view of things. There are also those who look on with disapproval at the Premier League and believe that English clubs have doped themselves financially, raising their debt levels without caring about the consequences.

Controlling the level of spending as thoroughly as Javier Tebas does prevents clubs from spending what they do not have, but it also means that they fall behind. Is it worth the sacrifice?

What is clear is that competing with such differences is almost impossible. The Premier League spends three times as much as the other four big leagues combined. Barcelona and Real Madrid are still demanding a competition other than the Champions League to generate more income and stop football going bankrupt. Well count the English out. The Super League is already here – it just goes by the name of the Premier League.

'Chelsea's shameless swagger'

By Stefan Bienkowski (Germany)

German football has long since come to terms with the financial power of the Premier League, but Chelsea’s extravagant January spending spree dominated the column inches of the German press.

“Chelsea’s shameless swagger” was the title that greeted readers of the esteemed newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung, as columnist Martin Schneider took aim at Todd Boehly’s use of “loopholes'' to circumnavigate the financial fair play rules that Bayern Munich CEO Oliver Kahn and much of German football were celebrating less than 12 months ago. Sebastian Wessling came to a similar conclusion in Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ), when he noted that Uefa rules were now “not worth the paper they are written on” following Chelsea’s “mind-boggling” transfer window.

Kicker, Germany’s largest sports magazine, also took exception to the money spent at Stamford Bridge. Rather than lead their coverage of the window with the Bundesliga’s biggest deals, the top story on their site on Wednesday morning was an extensive Q&A explaining how Chelsea could spend so much money. “At some point it will catch up with you,” concluded the explainer, in reference to Chelsea’s heavy spending and unorthodox, long contract deals.

Having said that, the German media certainly don’t see an abrupt end to the free-flowing spending in the Premier League anytime soon. “The Chelsea madness may come to an end after all,” noted Joern Reher in Germany’s largest newspaper, BILD. Before adding: “But probably only until the next transfer summer.”