Caborn calls for football pay change

The prime minister's ambassador for England's 2018 World Cup bid has said there should be "cost controls" on footballers' wages.

Richard Caborn's intervention comes after his successor as sports minister Gerry Sutcliffe caused controversy by saying Premiership remuneration was "obscene".

Gordon Brown was thought to have been angry about Sutcliffe's comments - and now his World Cup ambassador has added to calls for a rethink.

Asked in an ePolitix.com interview about Sutcliffe's view, Caborn said: "I think there ought to be cost controls. Huge television revenues are now washing through into wages and that is something football ought to look at and some of that ought to be invested back into football.

"There ought to be a discussion, not just at the English level but at the European level, and that's why the new European white paper and the new treaty changes on sport are important in this area and there ought to be some relationship between income and expenditure."

Caborn also suggested that England is a strong contender to stage the 2018 World Cup.

Asked what lessons he had learned from the failed 2006 World Cup bid, Caborn said: "Not to presume, not to be arrogant and to make sure that we use our bid to be much more proactive rather than reactive and to use it not just as a tournament but a force for good, particularly a force for good for young people.

"I think that we can bring to Fifa, the world governing body of football, as we did for the International Olympic Committee for the 2012 bid, a message that says that in partnership we could do a lot more than just a tournament.

"We can have a narrative that can be used to connect young people back into sport through the power, in this particular case, of football.

"I think that Fifa would very much welcome that as indeed the IOC welcomed that when we won the 2012 Olympics for London."