British PM Gordon Brown might not be a football expert but he is certainly a fan of the sport. And that is why he is siding with the fans as the English Premier League tries to move forward on a proposal to play an extra round of matches in the Premiership every season from 2010/11 in the major international cities in the world.
Mr. Brown says that although the idea is a novel and good one, the football authorities must take the fans’ views on the matter into the equation. He says:
Fans have to come first and you have to listen to their views on this. It’s important to recognise that the money has to go back into the game.
I have just come back from China and India and the support for the Premier League and people watching matches there is just incredible.
Now if that is money that is going back into football, and if that is helping keep the price of tickets down in England, and if that means that more fans get more opportunities of going to matches as a result, then that would be something that I think people would want to take into account.
There is no doubt about the worldwide interest in the Premier League. There is no doubt that that’s good for football because it gets more money into the game in England.
There is no doubt that the English Premier League has taken over from the Spanish and Italian as being probably the one that people would want to watch the most and therefore you have to get the best players into the league. So let’s hear what the fans say on this.
As impartial as you like: let the fans decide it. Well, you need not worry about the Premiership fans in the Far East, Africa or Australia; they would gleefully embrace the proposal. Not so sure about those based in England though…..