Blatter Implores Platini To Enforce Tighter Ownership Rules
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Blatter Seeks Tighter Licensing Rules
For Prospective Club Owners |
FIFA President Sepp Blatter yesterday in a meeting with European Parliament members in Brussels tasked UEFA President Michel Platini with "enforcing tighter licensing rules on prospective owners," ensuring investors have "adequate funds in order to launch a takeover rather than build the club on debt," according to Matt Lawless of the London TELEGRAPH. Blatter: "We are now facing investment in football, particularly the [English Premier League], that is out of control and this is where UEFA will have to do something with the licensing system." Lawless notes the new rules would "probe deeper" than the EPL's current "Fit and Proper Persons Test." Blatter also is "seeking to stop foreign billionaires investing in English clubs, warning that the game is at a crossroads where the richer clubs will only get richer [while] those without wealthy benefactors will gradually decline in an uneven playing field." Blatter: "We have to be alarmed. The economic power of football is immense." Lawless notes nine EPL clubs are "currently under foreign ownership," and Tottenham Hotspur, Newcastle United and Everton are "potentially set to increase those numbers." Blatter: "You get people turning up with banker's guarantees who are not interested in football and then they lose interest in the clubs and leave" (London TELEGRAPH, 10/7). In London, Kevin Eason reports Blatter "outlined his fears for an English game overloaded with debt, dominated by four clubs and owned by wealthy foreigners who could walk away at any moment." Blatter said of former EPL club Manchester City Owner Thaksin Shinawatra, who sold the club in September, "He sells his club like you would sell a shirt. Something is very badly wrong here." Eason notes the FIFA-backed six-plus-five rule, which would limit the number of foreign players on a club, would "help to produce a level playing field, with clubs forced to develop their own talent yet still able to showcase some of the world's best players" (LONDON TIMES, 10/7).
WORLD CUP: The AP's Raf Casert reported Blatter "will propose new World Cup bidding rules that would dash U.S. hopes of hosting the 2018 tournament but put the Americans in prime position to stage" the event in 2022. Blatter yesterday said that he "wants to avoid the World Cup staying in the Americas after Brazil stages it in 2014." Casert noted "chances are that the World Cup would return to Europe in the wake of the highly successful edition in Germany two years ago" (AP, 10/6).
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