(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-01-11 14:28

ROME - Renault Formula One Team boss and Queens Park Rangers co-owner Flavio Briatore has blasted the Italian soccer world and lauded the sport in Britain for its fair play and meritocracy.

"Here you are on market and you play in a clean competition, where the rules have no shadowy areas," he told the Italian edition of GQ magazine when asked why he bought into an English Championship (second division club) instead of one in his homeland.

"It's a challenge with only one yardstick: merit. That's why there are investors from all over the world here, while in (soccer in) Italy, there is not even one."

Italian soccer is attempting to recover from a series of troubles, including the death of a fan and a police officer in separate incidents last year and the 2006 match-fixing scandal that led to Juventus being relegated to the second tier.

But Briatore, who completed his takeover of QPR with Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone in November, is not optimistic about the future.

"There is a caste of the chosen, who manage soccer and every other aspect of (Italian) society, from finance to politics, that do not even let you take part, never mind win," he said.

"So I stay away. I like to be judged by my results only."

Briatore said greater severity in implementing the rules helped keep the sport cleaner in England, adding that the main difference the countries was in "sporting culture".

"Here you'll never see a player asking an opponent to be given a yellow card," he said. "The referees are never in question, because they don't feel protagonists.

"In Italy they are all handsome, athletic, telegenic. Here they have tubby bellies and they blow up very little because they are not mad about getting noticed".