FIFA president calls to rail against billionaire investors

Today Sepp Blatter called on European Union lawmakers to work with world football's governing body to draw up plans that would help tighten up regulations on club ownership to deal with the so-called "out of control" investment in football, particularly the English Premier League.

We have already seen super-rich investors like the Russian Roman Abramovich and the Abu Dhabi United Group buying out Chelsea FC and Manchester City. English football is too attractive for the investors from around the world because of its economic power. They always keep an eye on it and rumours of taking over of the English clubs never stop spreading on the media. Few months ago, Brittish media claimed that Belarus born Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska was interested in buying West Bromwich Albion. His reported wealth of £28 billion is even a match for Roman Abramovich. Anyway, the deal did not come true but who knows? Oleg Deripaska may come back anytime in the future.

Some fans may feel happy when being told that his club is taken over because they are looking for the cash injection to see some splendid achievements in the transfer market. In long term view, this can be a very bad phenomenon to football. Thus, Blatter's appeal is to restrict men with a lot of cash to make their profits and run. For example, the very recent case, former Thailand prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra sold Manchester City after a season and he reportedly gained a net profit of £30 million. While the current owner of Newcastle United Mike Ashley is also believed to settle for his shares for a price of £280 to £300 million soon which would leave him with a profit of £30 to £50 million from his 15 months in charge.

"I don't know how it can be stopped, but there is always a danger that these people will just one day leave. 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. What happens to the clubs then?", quoted the FIFA president. English Football Association chairman Lord Triesman today also waged war on English football's mounting debt, revealing that the game was a staggering £3 billion in the red and needed a radical review to stop it spiralling out of control. He also added that in 2006-2007, data identified over £950 million of debt in the top four clubs alone, with wages growing at 12% per year.

I agree with Blatter that there must be better control of football's finances, although he used to be a disgusting figure to me. It is not an easy job to rectify this problem of the football world but it is a must or otherwise there will be big financial difficulties for the English Clubs in the future.