United may put ban on players' books

The fall-out from Roy Keane's autobiography continued yesterday when a Manchester United director said that the club would try to impose a ban on United players putting their name to books while they are still players at Old Trafford.

David Gill, in Bangkok to secure a commercial deal for the club, said: "We don't think it's appropriate for players to publish a book while they're still playing for Manchester United. We want them to concentrate on playing."

Gill will be dismayed to learn that Penguin have rights to the paperback edition of Keane's book, and it can be published any time in the next 18 months.

David Beckham, however, has recently agreed a deal to publish his second autobiography and Gill accepted that United cannot prevent that from going to press.

"You can't apply rules retrospectively," he said. "If he's signed a contract, we're not in a position to deny him that opportunity."

Thereafter, however, United will endeavour to do just that, though whether such a policy can be enforced remains to be seen.

However United are not wishing to curb other commercial activities players are involved with.

"We believe they can do other commercial deals," Gill said. "Beckham's here doing Castrol and Pepsi, Roy Keane does Aer Lingus: that's fine. A book is another issue."

With Keane facing two charges from the English FA of bringing the game into disrepute because of remarks concerning a tackle on Alf-Inge Haaland in April 2001, Gill said that United's lawyers had not seen the autobiography prior to publication. Alex Ferguson stated previously that he had read the book.

"I'm sure obviously the publisher's lawyers looked at it, his lawyers looked at it. Manchester United, our in-house lawyers, did not look at it," Gill said. "It's going to go through the process and clearly we will support Roy as a key player within Manchester United."

Wales demonstrated their determination to have Craig Bellamy in their European Championship squad by spending £8,000 to charter a plane to fly the Newcastle striker to Finland for Saturday's international after his original plans were scuppered.

Bellamy, cleared on Wednesday to join up with Mark Hughes' squad after objections from Newcastle boss Bobby Robson, was left kicking his heels at Newcastle airport earlier yesterday when his flight was delayed for four hours, meaning he would have missed his connecting flight from Amsterdam.

After discussions between Football Association of Wales secretary general David Collins and president Des Shanklin, the FAW agreed to splash out £8,000 and hire a seven-seater jet.

Meanwhile, eight smaller Italian Serie A clubs yesterday refused a renewed offer from two pay-per-view television stations for the retransmission rights to their matches during the coming season, according to Luigi Corioni, president of one of the club's Brescia.

The stand-by clubs - Chievo, Atalanta, Como, Modena, Piacenza, Perugia, Brescia and Empoli - has provoked a two-week delay to the start of the Italian league which will now go ahead on September 15th.

"The first division championship will play as nine," said Corioni, confirming that they had rejected the offer made by the Stream and Telepiu stations of €53 million.