By Andrew Warshaw
July 29 – Three weeks before the start of the next English Premier League season, a new club-versus-country spat has broken out with Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore staunchly defending his organisation and insisting it is not to blame for successive failures of the England national team.
Critics widely target the Premier League’s lack of England-registered players for the country winning nothing of note since the 1966 World Cup – and also believe television scheduling of high-profile club games should not be given priority over England responsibilities.
Just days before England face Moldova and Ukraine in two important World Cup qualifiers in September, for instance, Liverpool versus Manchester United and Arsenal versus Tottenham Hotspur have been moved back a day for live television coverage.
Whilst Scudamore’s organisation has secured a mind-blowing TV deal of £5.5billion for the three seasons, only around 30 percent of Premier League players are English, a far lower home-developed percentage than any other major European nation.
But speaking at the pre-season Premier League Asian Trophy in Hong Kong, Scudamore used the opportunity to hit back forcefully at those who claim his organisation has become too powerful.
“It frustrates me enormously because it is so palpably not true,” he was quoted as saying. “We are putting on a competition that the best players in the world want to come here and play in.”
“The whole thing seems to me that if England don’t win something it is someone else’s fault. I have never, in my 15 years with the Premier League, never said the Premier League’s success, or lack of, is someone else’s fault. You have to make it yourself.”
Scudamore went further as he suggested the English Football Association should stop pointing the finger at others and needed to put its own house in order in terms of developing the game – and even rounded on the government.
“Let’s run the reverse argument. Where does that leave the people at the FA in terms of their accountability? It can’t be our fault. It is bigger than us. It is not the Premier League who ripped up the playing fields. It is not the Premier League that didn’t put the education into schools that the government should have done. That is not the Premier League’s fault.
“Clearly, we have a job to do. We have not won the World Cup since 1966. We (the Premier League) didn’t start until 1992. What happened between 1966 and 1992? Whose fault was that? The whole thing is immensely frustrating. It cannot be our fault on any level.”
Scudamore, not for the first time, also re-iterated his opposition to the idea of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar being moved to winter – a scenario that is gathering momentum after being backed by FIFA President Sepp Blatter.
“I’m not going to say I think it will happen because I’m still working the best I can, garnering enough support, a groundswell of support, to make sure it doesn’t happen in winter,” he said. “We do want to have it in summer – the summer is the right time.”
Using firmer language than ever on the issue, at least in public, Scudamore added: “If Qatar is unable to hold a proper tournament in the summer for fans then it should be put on somewhere else is my simple view.”
“My view is if you can’t actually meet the criteria of looking after the fans, if that is what Mr Blatter is now saying, then you should take it somewhere else where they can look after the fans.”
“When the technical bid book went in, it had to go through everything, like fan experience. The idea the technical committee did not know people were going to be exposed to that heat is crazy. If Mr Blatter says it is not right for the fans he should move it.”
“The world has a calendar that’s geared around finding those two months every four years in the summer to have the World Cup. To alter it to a different time of year messes up everybody’s calendar, not just ours.”
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