By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
The president of the Spanish football league “La Liga”, Javier Tebas, attacked the European Commissioner responsible for Sport, Glenn Micallef, according to Spanish news agency EFE, bringing into the discussion also the NBA Europe project and Real Madrid.
“I don’t doubt the Commissioner’s good faith, but he is more naïve than my teenage children,” Tebas said in front of Micallef at the annual meeting of the Union of European Clubs (UEC), created in 2023 to defend the interests of small and medium-sized clubs in light of the football Super League project that never came into fruition.
“It turns out that Europe’s second-biggest sport, basketball, is creating a Super League identical to the one that threatened European football in 2021”, said Tebas and made a direct connection to the NBA Europe project.
Tebas claimed that the people pushing this basketball competition are the same ones leading the football Super League, which was fully supported by Real Madrid, and that “this goes against the European sports model”.
He reproached the commissioner for not commenting on this issue on social media, where he did criticize “La Liga for doing something in the U.S. that wasn’t significant.”
The Spanish executive was referring to the Commissioner’s position against the Villarreal–Barça match that La Liga intended to stage in Miami, which triggered what Tebas called a “fun controversy” in the media and on social networks between the two.