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Opinion

Revolutionary plan to get rid of tedious international breaks

9 years ago
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International breaks – you either hate them, or really hate them.

No proper football for two weeks, just so England can play San Marino.

You couldn’t make it up.

Yes I know they are playing Switzerland as well but that is just as pointless.

Since the draw was made we all knew England were going to qualify having been handed basically a bye into the finals in France, then when they beat Switzerland away in the first of 10 group matches, that was the matter closed.

As usual England are playing a whole load of matches (10 in this group) where all but one or two of the games are basically walkovers against pub teams.

The reason that all of them (the national associations) love the proliferation of matches is simply down to money, that goes for the likes of England at least as much as the minnows.

As we know all the matches were moved back to Wembley simply because of cash and having to pay for the ridiculously over the top rebuilding costs of the national home of football.

All of this despite moving the games around the country, including St James Park, being a massive success.

I like watching the Euros and World Cups when they come around, some decent football to watch (as well as England!) and it helps fill in time between seasons.

However, something needs to be done about these stupid international breaks and I have just the solution.

It requires two things to happen.

Firstly, you get all the really rubbish countries, principalities, whatever, to pre-qualify, that would probably involve around half the participating teams.

So you would get the likes of Andorra, San Marino, Faroe Islands, Scotland….etc etc all playing against each other before one or two of them could be included with the proper countries/teams.

So that would reduce the number of matches England would have to play by between half and a third.

Then, because it is all just about money with the FA and Wembley etc, the Premier League could just give them a load of money in return for them not spoiling the season and boring us to tears with these two week, or whatever, breaks.

They reckon every Premier League club is going to get something like £40m extra each per year, starting from the next TV  deals which kick in next season.

That is £800m EXTRA per season for the Premier League clubs, which is £1.6bn in terms of the duration (two years) of every major international tournament featuring England.

If each club went without just a couple of million or so each season of this extra cash, they could hand England/FA something like £100m per tournament, in return for playing all these stupid friendlies outside the proper football season. Just have a load of matches each June once the season is finished and a couple each pre-season if necessary.

England/FA would get all the money they are desperate for, us normal people could watch our proper football and the only ones who would lose out are these made up/pointless countries such as Andorra, San Marino, Faroe Islands….Scotland.

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