The Premier League are confident their plan to play matches abroad will become reality after a positive initial reaction from the English FA, chief executive Richard Scudamore said on Sunday.
“I think it will (happen),” he told BBC radio. “I think it’s got a momentum, I think it’s got a huge amount of merit.”
The plans for an extra ‘International Round’ to be played from January 2011, which all 20 clubs have agreed to explore, have met a chorus of disapproval from the media and soccer supporters since they were revealed on Thursday.
UEFA President Michael Platini branded it a “strange and comical idea” in an interview with the Daily Telegraph on Saturday.
However Scudamore said the FA, who would have to sanction plans that would extend the Premier League season from 38 to 39 matches, had been more receptive of what he called “an idea whose time has come”.
“They, like us, can see the hurdles but they were supportive,” he said.
“(FA Chief Executive Brian Barwick) thought it was a fantastic idea but he did rather, with his humorous way as he does, say I’m sure in a few weeks’ time I’ll have thought of a few reasons why it’s not such a good idea,” added Scudamore.
“But his initial reaction was that it was a great idea.”
Scudamore also found an ally in former West Ham great Geoff Hurst, who scored a World Cup-winning hat-trick for England in the 1966 final.
“I come from a club and a background under Ron Greenwood where he very much believed that football was a global game,” he told the BBC.
“In principle I am not against taking football, and our great teams that are watched all over the world, all over the world for other fans to see live…If they see that as a good idea, then I’m not against it.”
Scudamore dismissed a suggestion in the Observer newspaper that the FA’s support would be dependent on clubs agreeing to field full-strength teams in the FA Cup, to release players without complaint for all England games and to lend their support to the 2018 World Cup bid.
“They are actually current rules. Clubs do release players because that’s what the rules say they have to do,” he said.
Scudamore said he had had a short conversation with FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke, who was in hospital on Thursday and Friday, about the idea and a full briefing to the world body would follow.
Asked whether the league needed the blessing of FIFA to proceed, he continued: “We believe FIFA statutes don’t currently cover this. I think they do deal with clubs not being allowed to go and play in other leagues, which is clearly not what this is, and international fixtures.
“But we are not looking to upset anybody on this. It’s more a question of why would we want to do it and upset everybody in the process? We wouldn’t.
“It would be disingenuous to say we had support and disingenuous to say we didn’t,” he said of FIFA’s initial reaction.
“It was a very brief conversation, Jerome Valcke is not well at the moment…all we did was set up the opportunity to go and discuss it properly through the proper channels.”
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