UEFA picks former Belgian PM Jean-Luc Dehaene to lead fight against European clubs’ spending

Ex-Belgian PM to help contain Euro soccer spending

NYON, Switzerland — UEFA appointed former Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene on Tuesday to lead its campaign to control excessive spending by Europe’s top soccer clubs.

Dehaene, who led Belgium’s government from 1992-99, was announced as the chairman of UEFA’s new Club Financial Control Panel.

UEFA president Michel Platini said the 69-year-old Dehaene is a longtime fan of FC Brugge and soccer.

“I know he is the perfect candidate and the perfect person to lead European football’s financial destiny,” Platini said after a meeting of UEFA’s ruling executive committee.

Dehaene is serving as a member of the European Parliament and chairman of a bank. He will head a team of finance and legal experts entrusted by Platini to oversee his policy of “financial fair play” among Europe’s wealthiest and most successful clubs.

UEFA, soccer’s European governing body, wants clubs to break even on soccer-related businesses by 2012 because it fears high spending on transfer fees and player salaries can’t be sustained.

The panel will monitor the accounts of clubs that play in the UEFA-organized Champions League and Europa League. It will have the power to recommend disciplinary cases that could result in clubs banned from the competitions.

“The basic principle is to not spend above and beyond what we earn,” Platini said. “That hasn’t been the basic principle for a number of years now.”

He said his fair-play policy was unanimously endorsed Tuesday, and backed by most club owners after he outlined the break-even principle in Monaco last month.

“They have had it with shoveling money into their clubs,” said Platini, who previously named billionaire owners Roman Abramovich from Chelsea and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of AC Milan among his supporters.

“Many club owners would like to sell their clubs but can’t because of the financial straits (the clubs) are in,” Platini added. “The only ones who want less rules are the ones who want to line their pockets in all this.”

UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino said more than 50 percent of clubs lose money every year, despite an era of booming television rights and sponsorship deals.

“It’s a negative spiral. We needed to take control once again,” said Infantino, who begins his new role Oct. 1 when incumbent David Taylor takes over UEFA’s newly created commercial arm.

Infantino said clubs that have large debts following takeover deals — which include American-owned English powerhouses Manchester United and Liverpool — would not automatically be punished by the coming new rules.

“Debt, per se, is not negative,” Infantino said. “The moment where you can’t finance the debt is the problem.”

UEFA’s ruling body also discussed a new financial regime announced late Monday by the English Premier League to regulate its 20 clubs.

The league will take temporary control of clubs that run into financial problems and ban them from buying players or raising salaries. Clubs will have to submit accounts each March to ensure they can begin the next season in August.

Platini said the Premier League’s rules were a continuation of UEFA’s philosophy, and praised the English league’s promotion of youth training by setting a squad limit of 25 players with eight to be “home grown.”

He said UEFA would provide detailed rules over the coming months to explain how the policy will operate.

“We are at the outset of our efforts,” Platini said. “It’s not easy, but we know what our goals are.”