The head of English soccer fears the global credit crisis could force one of the country's top teams into bankruptcy.

Football Association chairman David Triesman's assessment was immediately challenged by the head of the nation's top professional league.

"If somebody had said to me, 'Did I have a genuine fear that Lehman Brothers would go bust?' I'd say, 'No, I didn't,"' Triesman said Tuesday at a conference at Chelsea's Stamford Bridge.

"What I know is we are in a very much more volatile position in which debt is not only a problem in terms of its volume, it's a problem because those who own the debt are themselves now often in serious problems. Your fate isn't in your own hands."

With turmoil sweeping the financial markets, Triesman is braced for one of England's top clubs going out of business.

Triesman said it is impossible to know the true condition of the clubs because their finances are not public. He said English soccer clubs have debts totaling about $5.2 billion. Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal are believed to account for about a third of that debt. He called such debt a "tangible danger" at a time when "transparency lies in an unmarked grave."