Berlin - German Football League (DFL) president Reinhard Rauball has called on European football body UEFA to act on huge club debts and spiralling transfer fees. "It is high time we say to UEFA it cannot carry on like this," he told a discussion in Berlin.
Rauball called for a European-wide club licensing system based on the German model. A UEFA working group is studying the German system which looks at a clubs' ability to pay debts, transfer payments and wage levels.
"The office of (UEFA president) Michel Platini will be measured on whether he manages to control this problem," Rauball told the discussion Wednesday evening organized by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily.
Rauball said the debts of Germany's first and second division clubs were under the debt of 600 million euros (838 million dollars) at Spanish club Valencia. According to the DFL president, three English clubs each had debts of more than one billion euros.
Transfer sums such as the record 94 million euros paid by Real Madrid for Cristiano Ronaldo and 65 million euros for Kaka were "immoral," he said.
German football authorities have been critical of the takeover of clubs by wealthy investors and have urged domestic football to retain a regulation preventing majority holdings by potential investors.
German football federation (DFB) president Theo Zwanziger earlier this year also criticized "commercial excesses" in the game and the high wages paid to players.
