Rangers FC, one of the world's top 20 commercial clubs just five years ago, was placed into financial administration Tuesday. It will be penalized 10 points in the Scottish league, and there are discussions whether it can even afford to pay for policing a scheduled fixture this Saturday.

This does not, yet, indicate the end of a team that has been a giant in its community for 140 years. But, facing debts of £49 million, or $77 million, to the tax man alone, it does look like the beginning of the end of life as Scots have known it.

And it does, or it should, cast fear across the continent, where UEFA, Europe's governing body for soccer, has been warning for years that the biggest names carrying the sport around the globe are overspending at their peril.

Simultaneous to Rangers' woe, an English club, F.C. Portsmouth, is days away from filing for administration for a second time in two years. Proud Portsmouth was the F.A. Cup winner in 2008, and played European soccer the following season.

Rangers remains one of the world's best-supported teams in terms of stadium attendance and its far-flung fan following. But it has willfully overspent.

Portsmouth is a different matter. It is victim to unregulated ownerships that allowed any foreign suitor promising riches to pretend that they had the money and the know-how to own a British team.

What happens now in Great Britain, the home of soccer, is also a threat to all but the big two clubs, Barcelona and Real Madrid, in Spain. And it also is a threat to clubs across the once-rich continent of Europe.

Yet UEFA, particularly its president Michel Platini, has been vilified for at least attempting to impose licensing and financial control across the region. Platini's plan is basic. In essence, it is that clubs that spend more than they earn could be barred from the Champions League or the Europa League, starting with the 2013-2014 season.

This threat has been sneered at. Platini has been cast as a jealous Frenchman because clubs in his homeland have fallen behind the spend-and-dominate culture.

But Rangers and Portsmouth are likely to be just the start of the story. There are simply not enough oligarchs, not enough sheiks, not enough American billionaires to sustain the madness of player salaries that have outgrown what Hollywood pays its film stars, and what nations pay heads of government.

Manchester City, A.C. Milan, Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid and Barcelona all say they will comply and balance the books from here on out. They just don't say how, and they don't say what will restrain them from outbidding one another when the next potential match winner comes onto the market.

Rangers, in truth, was never in that league, and certainly Portsmouth only dreamed about being in it.

The debt that the 'Gers admit to, not counting the penalties that the Inland Revenue will seek once the court cases begin to bite, amounts to half the going rate for one big star.

You couldn't get a Lionel Messi or a Cristiano Ronaldo for double that sum. But you might, if ever you would want to take the risk, buy Carlos Tévez, the Manchester City property who has been in dispute with the club since last September and has not kicked a ball since he had a falling-out with the coach.

In contrast, Rangers sold its top striker, the Croat Nikica Jelavic, to Everton for £6 million in the January transfer window. Rangers' owner, Craig Whyte, blames previous overspending for the mess he bought into just nine months ago.

Whyte paid £1 to take on the team, the real estate on which it plays, and the debts that he thought he could manage.