Europe's top clubs raise stakes in row with FIFA

By Ken Ferris

LONDON (Reuters) - A stand-off between Europe's leading soccer clubs and the game's world governing body FIFA over compensation for the release of players for international tournaments such as the World Cup has come to a head.

The G-14 clubs, including European champions AC Milan, Real Madrid, Manchester United and Bayern Munich, made an official complaint last week to Switzerland's competition commission, which has opened a preliminary inquiry into FIFA's rules.

"This complaint concerns points of dispute between clubs and national teams, particularly concerning clubs making players available to national teams for free for competitions organised by FIFA," the competition commission said.

"The preliminary inquiry will aim to show if there are elements of illicit competitive restrictions under FIFA rules."

Clubs pay top players high wages and want a share of the huge revenues generated by tournaments such as the World Cup and European championship and the G-14 was anxious to reach an agreement before Euro 2004 starts in Portugal in June.

The group agreed at a meeting in Madrid in October to give FIFA and European soccer's ruling body UEFA formal requests for compensation salary payments to all clubs that release players for the World Cup and European championship finals.

It estimates that the central marketing of both tournaments generates more than three billion Swiss francs ($2.36 billion).

MAJOR STEP

The latest move is a major step in the row bedevilling top-flight soccer and will infuriate Zurich-based FIFA and its president Sepp Blatter, who believes the game should sort out its own problems without recourse to outside bodies.

"As long as this group is not official they will never be recognised..." Blatter told Reuters in an interview last month, adding that he was personally very sad at the G-14's stance.

"We need the big clubs but they should also have a bit of respect for the authorities of football," he said.

The G-14 has also threatened to take its grievance to the European Court of Justice but Blatter said in December that the demands were addressed to the wrong body.

"FIFA does not sit on the money generated by the World Cup and other tournaments," he said. "It pays a grand total of $264 million to the 204 national associations and six confederations over such a period.

"It follows that claims such as the G14's...should be addressed not to FIFA, but to the FAs who receive the vast majority of the funds generated."

"I cannot imagine that a club would sue UEFA or FIFA," Blatter said. "We invite the federations to a World Cup and we pay for travel, accommodation and prize money. What the national federations do with that money is their problem."

Blatter added that, under Swiss law, FIFA was a "non-profit" association unlike "billionaire clubs" who "have to maximise their own income...to absorb the ludicrously high player costs they are now lumbered with as a result of their own private but cut-throat competition to sign up the biggest stars".

A FIFA spokesman added: "We have to defend the interests of the 204 national associations and they are different to the interests of the top European clubs."

TIRED PLAYERS

Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, who is both chairman of Bayern Munich and vice-chairman of G-14, countered by saying: "The legal analysis we have asked for concludes that we have to release our players but we don't have to do it for free".

Michael Van Praag of Ajax, another G-14 vice-president, said: "At the moment, the only ones who do not benefit from the huge revenues of the World Cup finals are the clubs who provide the players.

"We take all the risks because we get the players back tired, injured and lacking in motivation. The clubs also pay their salaries and insurance while they are away. We just want some compensation for that."

The top clubs said last year they had worked out a formula linking compensation to call-ups for the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany and an international soccer source said they would demand about 20 percent of the World Cup profits.

FIFA figures show that the last World Cup in South Korea and Japan in 2002 generated a profit of some 140 million pounds ($258.6 million), which is expected to rise above 200 million pounds in Germany.

Nobody knows how long the Swiss competition commission's investigation will take but with Blatter having insisted that FIFA "will never make direct payments to individual clubs or players" the dispute could drag on for some time yet.

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