By IANS
Sydney : Australia has ruled out any chances of an English Premier League (EPL) fixture in 2010, with Football Federation Australia (FFA) saying that the League’s global plans will be detrimental to their own plans of developing the A-League, the Australian media reported Thursday.
“To play an EPL game here in the middle of our season would clearly be detrimental to our primary focus of developing the A-League,” FFA chief executive Ben Buckley was quoted as saying by the Sydney Morning Herald.
“We would have no hesitation in using our rights not to sanction the event. We haven’t seen a lot of detail, but from what we understand there are no benefits in this proposal whatsoever,” he said.
EPL boss Richard Scudamore’s announcement, that the world’s richest league wanted to play competitive fixtures abroad during the 2010-11 season has been met with universal protest from football authorities – although there is likely to be heavy commercial support for the plan.
However, it is ultimately the call of the local football officials to make a ruling.
A powerful coalition of FIFA boss Sepp Blatter, UEFA (European) boss Michel Platini, Asian Football Confederation (AFC) president Bin Hammam and Major League Soccer officials in the United States has made its opposition clear over the past few days.
While national associations have no power to intervene in the global broadcasting of EPL games, they do have the power of veto over any matches played on their soil.
The EPL wants to nominate five cities for hosting rights, but most of the likely venues – Dubai, Doha, Tokyo, Yokohama, Shanghai, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Bangkok, Seoul, Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney – fall under the umbrella of the Asian confederation.
The other possible venues are all in the US. Given both the Asian and North/Central American confederations are likely to refuse to sanction EPL games, the proposal is a non-starter.