By Andrew Warshaw
August 6 – With the new Premier League season getting under way this weekend and attention again focussed partly on the number of foreign stars involved, the tournament’s chief executive Richard Scudamore has again re-iterated his opposition to introducing quotas.
Much has been made of how few top-quality English players are available for national selection but Scudamore says the game at grass-roots level rather than restricting foreign imports is the way to produce “more and better homegrown players.”
“When you talk to the managers… they are almost unanimously agreed that it’s got to be a qualitative development programme that makes these players better players rather than artificially put quotas in,” he said. “We’ve been saying this forever. We don’t think quotas is necessarily the answer.”
Scudamore was talking at the launch of the season and predicts the Premier League could break its attendance record thanks in part to the reduction of ticket prices.
More than half the clubs in the top flight have either frozen or cut season ticket prices for 2015-16 in order to pass some of the new television deal worth a staggering £5.2 billion on to fans who have become increasingly restless with the cost of going to games.
“The clubs recognise that ticket pricing is an issue,” Scudamore told Sky. “I think we’re actually going to break our all-time attendance record next season in terms of occupancy.”
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