Libyan terrorist invests in Italian soccer club

As the world continues to battle terrorism in Afghanistan, avenging the World Trade Center attacks, Italian Serie A club Juventus Turin announced on Tuesday that it sold 6.4 million stocks to the Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Company.

"Juventus Football Club believes that this means a big interest by major investors in the club," the club wrote on its web site.

Are you kidding me?

The Investment Company has long been linked with Libyan terrorist Muammar al-Gaddafi, who just became Turin's second-largest stockholder, purchasing 23 million in stocks.

Clearly a PR disaster for Juventus, especially in light of the efforts made to cut-off funding to well-known terrorists and their organizations.

Seaking of money, general mangers, coaches, and fans alike have been complaining for a long time about the rise in players' salaries, fearing a two-class system around the world. Uli Hoene, Bayern Munich's general manager, and Franz Beckenbauer, club president, criticized Italian, English, and Spanish clubs for trying to outbid one another, raising the price tag to a point where most clubs cannot compete anymore.

As a result, year-after-year, the same European clubs play for their national championships as well as battling for the UEFA Champions League crown. Does that sound exciting? No, fans will tell you!

So what can the UEFA and FIFA do about the explosion in transfer fees and wages to make league-play more attractive and allow smaller clubs to compete nationally and internationally?

For starters, we need a salary cap, said Michael Meier, Borussia Dortmund's general manager.

Certainly, that would have kept AC Florence away from the verge of bankruptcy and prevented Lazio Rome from having to sell all its star players.

In the German Bundesliga, the financial gap between the elite- and smaller clubs is smaller compared to other European leagues.

However, Borussia Dortmund still outspent most of the smaller clubs by almost 50 million. And as for Hoene and Beckenbauer, they are nothing more than a bunch of hypocrites.

Why? Because they just signed Germany's most talented players in Sebastian Deisler and Michael Ballack, which cost them close to 100 million. A total that easily compares to transfer fees paid in Spain, England, or Italy.

Without a doubt, these two players are among the best in the Bundesliga and don't need to shy away from international competition either. But I don't want to hear anymore complaining about the rise in transfer fees from these two Bavarians.