Platini sympathy for club owners

Michel Platini said here Wednesday he wanted UEFA to do more to help football club owners who were “fed up” paying out huge sums to settle their team’s debts.

“In contrast to what you may think I have many, many clubs who ask me to do something. I’m not speaking about chief executives, but the owners,” Platini, president of European football’s governing body, told a press conference at the end of UEFA’s 33rd ordinary congress.

The French footballing great explained: “With the (economic) crisis they are fed up paying out so much to settle the debts of their own clubs.

“As they can’t (impose) self-regulation they’ve asked UEFA to come up with a rule to help them no longer spend what they really don’t want to spend.”

In Copenhagen this week UEFA agreed to the setting up of a panel of experts charged with controlling the finances of clubs playing in Europe.

Platini insisted he wanted to go further than that by increasing the equity in European competitions.

“We’re at the beginning of a new era, it’s going to take time to deal with this, but we’ll get there.”

He added: “These (clubs) with a budget of 50 million euros shouldn’t spend more than they have.

‘If they spend 70 million I consider that cheating, we’re going to try to put things in order.”

He then recalled a conversation he once had in Italy before he became a member of UEFA’s executive committee.

“I said to some people ‘Can you buy a Ferrari if you don’t have the money? In football, not only do you not go to prison but on top of it you can get the most beautiful girls and the Ferrari, it’s not logical’.”