We don’t need a FACup of our Premier League too

About 8 years ago, FIFA forced Manchester United to pull out of the FA Cup and compete in the now defunct World Club Championships. As a result, the competition went ahead without one of the leading teams. The damage it did to the longstanding tradition and significance of the FA Cup is still felt today.

Now the money mad Premier League bosses have come up with an equally damaging plan. They want to increase the number of games played in the season to 39, with the extra game being hosted aboard for mega bucks. Already, the Premier League is broadcast to over 200 countries and teams are forced to go abroad for meaningless friendlies during pre-season, often at the detriment of the players fitness and health. However, the latest proposals look to extend this foreign farce and make it an integral part of the league season and in return, the Premier league can sell its soul to the highest bidder.

The money men are out to completely ruin the national game. Already, many of our top teams are full of mediocre foreign imports, pushing home-grown kids further down in the pecking order. We have a foreign national team manager and now we are going to begin the process where our teams will play on foreign soil, thousands of miles away from the people who make the teams what they are.

If the FA goes down this road, it will be the start of a slippery slope and down the franchise route taken by many teams in American sports, where the teams have little or no connection to the geographic area of the people which their name suggests.

Interestingly, the Premier League now has a number of American owners who have bought into the English game with no real ideal of the history or traditions of the clubs. Almost every other confederation (Asia, Africa, South America) have resisted the idea of the Premier League gallivanting on their territory except North America. That’s right; the Yanks are the only people who want this ridiculous extra game to ‘spread the games appeal’. In a country where several attempts have been made to increase ‘soccer’s’ appeal and failed, taking our national sport to a amateur environment will do nothing other than expose some of our already overpaid failures to the riches that await them in Hollywood. Just ask David Beckham.

This move is not about spreading our game to global audiences, we already do this through TV, this is about selling the family jewels so that a few men can get their hands on yet more dirty cash.

We must resist them.