Crisis meeting over Italian football

By Frances Kennedy
BBC reporter in Italy

The governing bodies of Italian football and representatives of the clubs and players are meeting in Milan to seek solutions to a crisis that is plaguing the country's national sport.

Many of the leading clubs are in severe financial difficulty, and there is the risk they may be ineligible for European competition because new criteria require the competing clubs to have their accounts and taxes in order.

The Serie A clubs owe the government more than $500m in back taxes.

A so-called "save football" decree would have allowed Italy's cash-strapped clubs to spread the cost of their tax bills over several years.

But the measures have been opposed by some members of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's governing coalition.

Salary cap plan

A controversial proposal for the government to offer a lifeline by letting the clubs spread this payment over a five-year period has provoked a split in the coalition, with one of the parties threatening to pull out should it be approved.

Italian club Lazio (pale blue shirts) is one of those in trouble

Now on the agenda is a sort of industrial rescue plan for the glamorous world of Italian football, known to its followers as "calcio".

Proposals include salary caps for players whose overall wages should not exceed 60% of a club's revenue, a reduction in the size of the squads and fines for clubs who don't pay their staff or their taxes on time.

The simmering crisis has come to the boil now because of new rules.

At least four clubs, including Lazio and Roma, have no chance of doing meeting the relevant criteria by the 31 March deadline.

Inflated wages

And, if the plan to allow clubs to spread the payment over fiver year's goes through, the Northern League has threatened to pull out of the coalition if such preferential treatment is given to football ahead of other troubled industries.

In addition, the move was vetoed in advance by the European Union as being illegal state aid.

Last Thursday's cabinet meeting had earlier been expected to approve the proposals to help the clubs to balance their books by the end of the month.

Prime Minster Berlusconi is the owner of Italy's most successful club, the defending European champions, AC Milan.

He has warned there could be trouble on the terraces unless the government helps clubs struggling with big debts - a legacy of the boom days of inflated television revenues and equally big player pay packets.