Briatore: QPR's billionaires will not splash the cash

LONDON: Flavio Briatore added more millions to Queens Park Rangers' coffers with a new sponsorship deal on Tuesday.

However, the Italian also made it clear that the English second division club's billionaire owners had no intention of emulating Chelsea's Roman Abramovich by pumping money into their plaything.

"We are not throwing away our money at all. Don't be confused," he told a news conference after announcing a five-year 20-million-pound ($39.85 million) deal with Italian clothing company Lotto that the club said was its biggest-ever sponsorship.

"If the shareholders are wealthy, the club is still the club... we try and put the club together in the right way," said the Renault Formula One team boss.

"What we have done until now is the demonstration that we are not throwing away money at all. We are not the new blood in football.

"It is completely wrong to compare QPR with Chelsea. We want to do it our way," he added.

"When someone arrives in a new business, everybody says this is the new blood to suck. There is nothing to suck here. We don't have blood."

Briatore bought the ailing West London club in September with a group of friends that included Formula One's billionaire supremo Bernie Ecclestone, who tried to buy Chelsea before Russian Abramovich stepped in.

Indian steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, who ranks as the fourth richest man in the world according to Forbes List, has also taken a stake and fans have started boasting about the club now being the wealthiest in London.

The aim is to take QPR, winner of the League Cup in 1967, back to the Premier League, but Briatore said the process would take time.

"We try doing it step by step," he said. "When we bought the club, QPR were last in the table.

'No miracles'

"Next year we try to improve the position of the club but there are no miracles. We want to consolidate the club, to create a good base... we are working to make sure that if we go up, we are not like an elevator that goes up and down.

"You can only build a tower with a strong base. You can't build a tower on sand," he said.

"We don't deal in fantasy, we deal in reality."

Briatore said QPR had plenty of potential and he was excited by the challenge. He also promised fans that the club would remain in West London, even if they had to move from their Loftus Road ground.

The flamboyant Italian, a Juventus fan who first took an interest in QPR because he regularly flew over the stadium in his helicopter on the way to Renault's factory, said he had fallen in love with English soccer.

"I think English football is the best football in the world, for different reasons," he said.

"One of them is that football in England is a sport, an event and not an excuse to fight. The federation has done an incredible job in England. Everybody accepts the rules.

"In Italy, there are no rules. We have a problem every weekend or every two weekends.

Agencies

(China Daily 03/27/2008 page23)