INTERVIEW-Soccer-Italian game no longer reliant on tycoons - chief

By Brian Homewood TURIN, April 1 (Reuters) - Italian football is no longer dependent on the whims of tycoons who have traditionally controlled the country's biggest clubs, the head of the football federation (FIGC) told Reuters in an interview. Carlo Tavecchio said that Italian football, whose credibility has been rocked by match-fixing scandals, hooliganism, falling attendances and financial problems, was now a safe place to invest. Tavecchio, elected as FIGC president last August, said new rules had been put in place to prevent a repeat of the situation at bankrupt Serie A club Parma, where at one stage this season players were having to do their own laundry. He added the federation was investing heavily in youth development to try and get the national team back on track after two successive group stage eliminations at the World Cup. "The federation is recovering its prestige, the prestige of being the authority of the football system and no longer in the hands of the clubs," Tavecchio said. "We are laying down the rules so that investments can be made in Italy with extreme security. We are no longer tied to the mood of people, or personalities, or patrons of any type." Tavecchio, who said that Serie A needed to be cut from 20 to 18 teams and Serie B from 22 to 20, pointed to the extension of the partnership with Puma on Monday as evidence of the FIGC's credibility. The German sportswear giants, in addition to supplying kit and equipment, will work as the FIGC partner on youth development and women's football in a deal which they said would take them into the next decade. "Puma are making a very intelligent investment because we have a vocation to grow," said Tavecchio. "We have recently put rules into practice regarding the management of the clubs, whether it be from a point of view of maintaining the correct administration, the patrimonial control and control of the management costs." He said rules had been tightened up regarding cash flow and breaking even while a cap of 25 players had been placed on squads to keep wage bills in check. Puma chief executive Bjorn Gulden shrugged off any suggestion that investing in Italian football was a risk. "We had eight teams at the last World Cup, we have a couple of South American teams, we had a couple of African teams and we had a couple of European teams," he said. "Italy is part of our strategy and, having been involved in the discussions with them for the last 12 months. We feel very confident that the management of the FIGC and the direction they are heading. "We don't see it as a risk, we see it as a vehicle that fits our brand very well and have had very good conversations." Tavecchio said the FIGC had to work with schools to find and develop young players. "We want to get the schools involved, a world which until now has been completely abandoned (by the FIGC)," he said. "We have around 20 million students in Italy, and that is a big market from both a financial and moral point of view," he said. "We have 5,300,000 amateur players, so we are fishing in a huge ocean," he said. "We have a culture at the moment where we have young people stuck on the computer and telephone, if we cut them at off from those, then football will grow." Women's football was another area where Italy had to do better, he said. "There are 31 million women in this country and 20,000 registered players; in the Netherlands, there are six million inhabitants and there are 30,000 registered players. It can only grow." Despite all Italy's problems, Juventus have still reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League, going further than any side from the English Premier League, and the national side, world champions as recently as 2006, reached the Euro 2012 final. (editing by Justin Palmer)