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English Premier League clubs want to control spending

LONDON — English Premier League clubs responded to concerns about spiralling wages by agreeing yesterday to impose the first spending controls by a major European league.

UEFA warned on Monday that the failure to control salaries, which have risen 40 percent at leading European clubs in five years, was endangering the future of soccer on the continent and the Premier League is keen to ensure the expected eight billion dollars being generated by a new three-year television rights deal isn’t frittered away by clubs.

West Ham co-chairman David Gold said the majority of clubs agreed to adopt a restraint on wage increases. Exact details of the rules, which will be voted on by the main Premier League board in April, weren’t immediately available. The rules are designed to prevent a repeat of the financial meltdown at Portsmouth, which became the first Premier League club to enter bankruptcy protection in 2010.

Premier League clubs which enter European competitions have to abide by the financial fair play rules introduced by UEFA to eventually make teams break even on their soccer-related business.

Third tier Portsmouth will lose their league status if they do not exit administration by the end of the season and if a takeover by the Pompey Supporters’ Trust (PST) does not succeed, the Football League said yesterday.

A renowned soccer deal-maker is leading a new bid to rescue the English club who have been in administration for a year and are again facing another relegation.

Fans from the Pompey Supporters’ Trust (PST) had been hoping to take over the former Premier League club but their plan has been delayed by legal complications over ownership of the Fratton Park stadium. They now face a rival bid. But the Football League said in a statement that they would not accept a takeover from any group other than preferred bidder PST.

The Football League’s Insolvency Policy prohibits a club from beginning two consecutive seasons in administration.

Soccer’s transfer system needs to be reformed to allow a fairer distribution of wealth in the game, the European Commission said in a report yesterday. The report said that “very little” of the roughly 4.02 billion dollars spent by European clubs annually on transfers found its way to the smaller clubs or grass-roots level, the report said.

The number of transfers in European football more than tripled between 1995 and 2011 and the amounts spent by clubs increased seven-fold, but most of this was concentrated among a small number of the richest clubs, the report said.

Liverpool’s Jamie Carragher will retire from soccer at the end of the season after making more than 700 appearances for the club, the former England defender said yesterday. The 35-year-old, who joined the five-times European champions at the age of nine and made his first-team debut in 1997, is no longer an automatic starter and his appearances have become increasingly infrequent this season.

AP, Reuters