UEFA panel agrees 2012 deadline for clubs to curb spending or face Champions League ban

Euro soccer clubs get deadline to curb spending

MONACO — Europe’s top soccer clubs will be barred from the Champions League if they don’t curb their spending.

A UEFA strategy council on Friday approved a 2012 deadline for clubs to balance their books if they want to play in the world’s most lucrative club competition. The European soccer governing body believes spiraling inflation of transfer fees and players’ wages can’t be sustained.

UEFA says it also wants to control costs by limiting how many players a club can have in its first-team squad. The strategy council included representatives of Europe’s wealthiest clubs, leagues and players’ unions.

“Financial fair play is crucial in order to promote the long term sustainability of European football,” UEFA President Michel Platini, who chaired the meeting, said in a statement. “The principle has now been established and this is a major breakthrough.”

Platini has been critical of clubs carrying large debts after takeovers, such as the American-owned Manchester United and Liverpool, or chasing success by borrowing huge amounts to buy star players, as Real Madrid did in the offseason.

UEFA’s new rules would require clubs to break even and spend only what they earn from soccer-related income such as ticket sales and television deals.

They are also designed to stop billionaire club owners — such as the ruling family of Abu Dhabi which bought Manchester City last year — from investing huge amounts of money and driving up the cost of transfers and salaries.

Platini said that Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, who owns Chelsea, and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, owner of AC Milan, were among “85-90 percent” of club owners who told him they want new controls to end an era of excessive spending.

Milan director Umberto Gandini was one of 17 strategy council members who agreed unanimously Friday to usher in soccer’s new financial regime.

“We realized the responsibility that we have. It was a very good meeting,” Gandini told The Associated Press.

UEFA’s executive committee meets Sept. 14-15 in Nyon, Switzerland, to approve the “financial fair play” policy. It will order detailed proposals by next summer.

Clubs will have two years to adjust their finances and business practices before entering the Champions League or Europa League in the 2012-13 season.

UEFA is creating a financial-control panel to police the clubs and issue warnings and fines or expel them from the competitions.

Players’ spokesman Theo van Seggelen told the AP the threat of sanctions was crucial to make the rules work, and would be applied if clubs failed to pay players on time.

“We are talking about 3,000 clubs and not just the seven clubs that can do whatever they want,” said Van Seggelen, secretary general of the FIFPro umbrella group of players’ unions. “We already had problems before the world financial crisis. Now it is the right moment to have a control system.”