Scudamore's game 39 plans spark worldwide criticism

The football world has been divided these last 10 days by the Premiership's controversial plans for 'game 39', that every Premier League team plays an extra domestic game in one of a number of chosen other countries.

The Premier League's Chief Executive, Richard Scudamore's (pictured on the right) plan is that each of the Premiership's teams competes in one game per season abroad. But it has been deeply unpopular in the eyes of English football fans everywhere and leaders of foreign countries.

Scudamore's plans apply to domestic games, which is where the first problem in his proposal orginates. Surely 'domestic games' should be played domestically. European matches are when games should be abroad and that is how it should stay.

Scudamore said: I've been working hard for years with the big clubs to reconcile their ambitions with the smaller clubs. That's what this is all about." But is it really? It certainly is a plan that is hard to see the positive effects in, unless you are one of the rich businessmen behind the team's in the top flight. For men like West Ham's non-executive chairman Eggert Magnusson, this is a chance to sell more merchandise and get more support.

But what about the clubs below the Premiership, the smaller sides with less money? There is already a huge financial gap between the Premier League and the Football League, evident from promoted Derby's spending of just over £8 million on six players last Summer, yet they have still struggled in the top division this season. This included Robert Earnshaw, Claude Davis and Andy Todd, arguably good players, but for less than that between 1991 and 1992, they could have signed Peter Schmeichel, Alan Shearer and Eric Cantona, certainly fantastic players.

And what about even further down the league? With many lower league sides in a lot of debt already, there is no positives in Scudamore's plan for them and they are being more and more priced out of competing by chairmen that can steam roller their side to the top by pumping a seemingly endless cash supply into them. And there is seemingly nothing some of them will not do for profit, even if that means moving the club from its fanbase to a more profitable area.

Just ask Womble on Tour, who knows what it is like for football's money-men to ignore the fans. He was a Wimbledon fan until chairman Peter Winkelman moved the club to Milton Keynes, ignoring its history and fans and re-named it the MK Dons, a franchising move that lost it many supporters and, like Womble on Tour, they went to support a new side, AFC Wimbledon, who they felt was starting from where they think any football side should start, from the bottom of the league.

He says in his blog:

"The Premier League long since stopped caring about the supporters and arguably
about the integrity of the game. What they're interested in is profit. That's
fine in most businesses, but in football fascination with money alone is a
dangerous thing. You risk destroying the nature of the game and with it, its
long term well-being. Football is already endangered in this country. Young fans
are priced out of going to games which means they'll never get into the habit of
watching their team. Years down the line that's going to have a potentially
disastrous effect on attendances. Now here's another scheme that isolates
football from its followers. It simply mustn't happen."

Like the MK D0ns situations, English football fans are being ignored while their clubs are franchised. Like the MK Dons situation, the Premier League is not, as Birmingham co-owner David Gold says, "making history", but ignoring it.

If Scudamore believes that his plan will enhance English football's reputation abroad, he could not be more wrong. It has already had an adverse effect on England's bid to host the World Cup and the plans have already been rejected by the USA, Asia, and UEFA President Sepp Blatter, who has seen through Scudamore's plan for globalisation for what it really is, a plan to make the rich clubs richer.

Fifa will examine the Premier League's proposals at its executive committee meeting on 14 March.