Should the EPL host international fixtures?

After successful club friendlies in Australia which had Manchester United and Liverpool play against the A-League All Stars and Melbourne Victory respectively, I’ve wondered whether the Premier League should nominate one round per season where the teams can play at a stadium of their choice in the world.

The reason for this idea had to be because of the friendly between Liverpool and Melbourne Victory at the MCG in July. The atmosphere at the MCG was almost 50 times better than what is achieved at Anfield, Liverpool’s home in the English Premier League.

This was shown through the singing of You’ll Never Walk Alone, the club anthem for Liverpool, which around 95,000 fans were singing with the same absolute pride and emotion as you would expect at Anfield.

The game was great as well. We saw Steven Gerrard score a goal and the emergence of Iago Aspas, a new signing to Liverpool this season who is yet to receive a lot of game time due to the partnership of Daniel Sturridge and Luis Suarez.

Although the game wasn’t as exciting as the Manchester United v All Stars game, both games received positive feedback from players and fans.

The idea of international Premier League matches was actually thought up in 2007-08 when the Premier League organisers thought that for the last round of the season, the teams can play in different countries.

This fixture was to be known as Game 39 and the games would be played at neutral venues around the world in Asia, Australia and America over the course of either the 2010-11 or 2013-14 seasons.

This idea was met with extreme levels of condemnation by several managers and club owners. They argued it could see an increase of player fatigue and it would’ve broken the tradition of the 38-round robin fixture where the teams play each other twice, both home and away.

Other football leagues and confederations were also skeptical as they believed that it could destroy the image of football in a global perspective and treat football as if it was a circus, not a game – as expressed by Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA.

This idea of international fixtures is also not original. We’ve seen international matches in the NFL, where they have played in England and Mexico, and in Major League Baseball, where a series between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Dodgers will be played in Australia next year.

So Roarers, if you happen to be a fan of Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal or any other club in the Premier League, would you like to see them play a Premier League fixture here in Australia?

We would be able to see our team play at appropriate timeslots as opposed to the usual 2am-4am on a Sunday or Monday morning, which means that we wouldn’t need to stay home from school and/or work on the following day.

It’s also a great way for some of the A-League clubs to observe some of the skills and talent from the Premier League players, which can help expand the quality of the A-League players themselves.

The A-League has already received talented players such as Alessandro Del Piero, Emile Heskey, Shinji Ono and William Gallas, along with ex-players such as Dwight Yorke and Robbie Fowler who have contributed well to their teams.

But by having Premier League teams in Australia, young and developed players in Australia can build on their game so that we don’t even need to have marquee players in the near future.

Of course, clubs would still have international players as a way of boosting membership and crowd figures since the A-League is still expanding, but that doesn’t mean that local players here in Australia can’t be talented and quick thinking.

I think on behalf of many football fanatics, this would be a way of seeing ‘real’ football.

Many football fans have often criticised how the A-League games have been played. It has been mainly a defensive style with no real flow of possession play, so by having Premier League games here, many of these fans can finally shut up and enjoy what they want to see.

Along with this, games involving international teams playing in Australia would often be considered as ‘once in a lifetime’ games, even though there was a gap of just 14 years between when Manchester United last played in Australia and their July appearance.

The most notable issue would be the timing and schedule of when games are going to be played.

Since the Premier League and A-League both run on a similar time frame (August-May even though A-League runs from October-April), they need to be careful in not running a game that should conflict with A-League games.

If this did occur, it would be obvious that crowds for A-League games would be decimated, knowing that fans would prefer to see Premier League games than A-League games mainly because of the quality of football.

Because of timing, this could cause issues to clubs who would have to travel back to England to play their fixture for the Premier League – or in the worst case scenario, Champions League and Europa League which are played in the middle of the week.

To travel from England to Australia, it would take a good 24 hours or more to get here which could cause serious tiredness and fatigue from players. Players already have a busy schedule and I can’t see why they would want to be travelling to and from places just to play football.

Clubs already have a set of international fixtures which they take part in during the off-season. Along with this, since 2003, the Premier League has set up an Asian trophy were some of the Premier League teams play against local clubs in Asia.

The matches are played in China, Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, but I am sure they will be trying to expand the competition so it can be played in Australia, New Zealand or anywhere in Oceania.

This, along with the international friendlies, gives a reason why there is no point in having a competition round being played overseas.

Secondly, I can’t see why clubs need to play internationally to expand the image of football worldwide. Football is already a global sport that is played in more than 200 nations, so it isn’t really necessary to play overseas just for the sake of it.

The reason why AFL, NRL, NFL and Major League Baseball along with the NHL play international fixtures is because these sports have only been popular in one or two nations. They see this as a way of not only boosting the popularity of the sport in the desired nation, but also as a boost to the national teams who happen to be playing these sports.

Of course, football isn’t popular in every single nation, but it isn’t the responsibility of top-level clubs in the world to go in and play there just to receive an instant boost of support for the game. The people who are running the national institutes of football should do every bit they can to get people involved in the game and promote it as they have in other nations.

And finally, there’s the name of the competition itself – it is called the English Premier League, not the Worldwide Premier League.

I know there are a lot of people who support the Premier League worldwide but the League should stick to its grassroots and nurture up-and-coming players from their own country, not try and exploit the clubs just because of the way they are.

It was quite obvious that the majority of chairpersons involved in the Premier League clubs couldn’t see this idea work due to the issues that I have pointed above.

It would be nice to have international fixtures of the Premier League, but for now there seems to be too many negative considerations that are stopping this from going ahead.