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• Deal done less than 24 hours after Carling Cup semi-final
• Gerrard also agrees future ambassadorial role with club

The Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard has committed his future to the club by signing an extension to his contract.

The 31-year-old England international finalised the deal less than 24 hours after scoring the only goal in Liverpool’s 1-0 Carling Cup semi-final first leg victory at Manchester City.

He told the club’s website: “I’m very happy. It’s a very proud day for myself and my family. This is the club I love and is the club I have supported since I was a young boy.

“I am living the dream as the captain of one of the biggest clubs in the world. I love coming to work every day and the experiences I have had since I was eight years of age and first signed for the club, I wouldn’t change them for the world. To extend that and to hopefully have some more good times in a red shirt is what I want.”

Gerrard has also agreed to take up an ambassadorial role with the club when he retires as a player.

“It’s really flattering for me that the club have offered me the chance to stay when I eventually hang my boots up,” he said. “Hopefully that will be in many years to come because I want to play for as long as I can.”

Steven GerrardLiverpoolguardian.co.uk

• Taylor backs ‘very strong message’ over racist abuse
• Lord Herman Ouseley urges consistent tough stance

Luis Suárez’s eight-match ban for racially abusing Patrice Evra has been supported by the head of the Professional Footballers’ Association as “a very strong message to the rest of the world”.

The Uruguayan Liverpool striker is expected to appeal against the suspension, with his defence being that he was unaware that language acceptable in his country was viewed as racist in Europe. Liverpool reacted angrily to the punishment for the 24-year-old, who was also fined £40,000 by an FA independent regulatory commission.

Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the PFA, said the sanction was an important message, especially after the outcry at Sepp Blatter’s remarks – later retracted by the Fifa president – that racism on the pitch should be settled by a handshake.

Taylor said: “This was an independent commission experienced in law and football and they must have had compelling evidence, and it sends out a very strong message to the rest of the world.

“I understand the point about cultural differences but if you come to this country all players have to abide by not just the laws of the game but the laws of the land as well. Referring to someone’s skin colour has got to be offensive – it’s self-evident.

“No one can say the FA have ducked this issue and bearing in mind outcry in this country over Sepp Blatter’s remarks it sends out an important message. This is a timely reminder for the FA, the PFA and the clubs to continue education programmes particularly for players coming from abroad: it is never right to make reference to a person’s skin colour or nationality.”

Taylor said the high-profile nature of the issue, with two of the biggest clubs in the world, would reinforce the message.

He added: “This is a situation involving two of our biggest clubs and a very sensitive time and it reiterates the message we want to get out. We are a multicultural society and a cosmopolitan league and players must have equal respect for people regardless of their nationality or skin colour.

“You can understand Liverpool being upset as they are a top-quality club with a top-quality manager but perhaps it is a timely reminder that players new to this country need to be advised about what is unacceptable.”

Lord Herman Ouseley, the chairman of the anti-racism campaign Kick It Out and former chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, also backed the FA’s punishment and urged the game’s authorities to maintain a tough stance.

Asked if this was the landmark case Kick it Out needed, Ouseley told the BBC: “It’s not that Kick it Out needed it, it’s football needs it.

“It is quite important that the football authorities take the decisive action where the evidence is there, where they carried out thorough investigations, to impose sanctions that would hopefully prevent other players from not maintaining the standards of conduct that are expected in any professional arena.

“And professional football is such that if players who are very expensively paid to perform their functions, providing entertainment, also have a code of conduct that if breached it’s professional misconduct and therefore it requires the sanctions that are to be imposed.

“It remains to be seen whether the FA will maintain a tough stance and consistency that is needed to see this through, we’re still in a process.”

The former FA executive director David Davies told the BBC the case was “one of the most difficult of modern times because of language and cultural issues”.

“The FA has been at the forefront of fighting racism over more than a decade, and using football to do so – perhaps way ahead of Uefa, let alone Fifa,” Davies said.

Luis SuárezLiverpoolManchester UnitedThe FAguardian.co.uk

• Europe’s biggest clubs could start breakaway league in 2014
• Owners motivated by possibility of generating more money

Who are the teams involved?

It is the biggest brands in football that are driving this agenda. Between them Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Internazionale, Milan, Manchester United, Liverpool and Barcelona have won 36 European Cup and Champions League titles, almost two-thirds of those played. Where these clubs play money will undoubtedly follow.

Added to this are Arsenal and Chelsea who, despite never having won Europe’s elite trophy, boast international fanbases that would assist in driving the revenues of a competition. There would also be invitations to the other big names from across Europe: Juventus, Roma, Ajax, Porto, Marseille and a few others — Manchester City perhaps?

Why do they want to do it?

The short answer is: money. And lots of it. A new breed of football owner has emerged who does not see the proprietorship of their sporting assets as a benevolent activity. Men such as Silvio Berlusconi have used football club ownership to push a popular political agenda, or Roman Abramovich to raise his profile overseas with a trophy asset. Both have been content to sustain huge losses in support of their clubs. But the US owners who began entering the football market with the 2005 Glazer takeover of Manchester United are used to generating cash from their sports franchises. They consider it insane that almost every entity at the top of the world’s most popular sport haemorrhages cash.

How could they make a breakaway actually happen?

Legally they would be entitled to break away from football’s existing structures in 2014 when the current accord between the clubs and Uefa, which in the Champions League runs the club game’s most lucrative competition, elapses.

Eyeballs follow Lionel Messi, Wayne Rooney and Fernando Torres wherever they go. And with fan interest come the dollars of sponsors and broadcasters – as Fifa has found with the explosion of its revenues over the past decade and a half.

In 1997 Fifa’s entire annual revenue was $22.5m; by 2009, at the same stage in a World Cup cycle because it was also one year before a tournament took place, Fifa had generated $1bn from their events. With that amount of money to share between them the clubs could make anything happen.

How would a breakaway work?

To maximise revenues and to provide security of income for those clubs involved, access to the tournament is likely to be restricted. Although a closed league would probably not play well with European fans used to promotion and relegation, a simple play-off system for a single place may be the kind of sop that clubs aim to get away with.

Similarly to the existing Uefa Champions League, it