Richard Scudamore: England may have to select from second tier as tinkering with quotas is not the answer to England side's failings

The head of the Premier League talks international football, ticket prices and club matches in foreign fields

Richard Scudamore vies with Bernie Ecclestone as Britain’s most powerful sports administrator (Getty Images)

“Where would England finish in the Premier League?” asks Richard Scudamore. “Would they win it? Would they finish 10th? I don’t know.”

A prospect the Premier League’s executive chairman doesn’t mention is that England might be relegated from their own league. The thought is not new. A few years ago, Sir Alex Ferguson remarked that Manchester United would beat England on any given Saturday – though obviously the game wouldn’t kick off at 3pm.

Scudamore vies with Formula One’s Bernie Ecclestone as Britain’s most powerful sports administrator. The Premier League is a phenomenon. When it began in 1992, Sky was persuaded to part with £38.2m a season for the broadcast rights.

The new deal that will come into force in August next year will bring in £1.7bn a season from domestic broadcasters. The overseas rights that were worth £8m a season in 1992 fetched £479m in 2012-13.

That season Wembley played host to a European Cup final that featured two German clubs. The following year, Germany won the World Cup. England, the team with its foundations in the richest league in the world, endured the worst tournament in its history, the highlight of which was a draw with Costa Rica.

Since the Premier League came into being, every major European league has seen its nation win the World Cup. The only exception is the one that thinks itself the best league in the world.

“I am disappointed, I share the pain of this,” said Scudamore. “Go back to England v Croatia, November 2007, the “Wally with the Brolly”. I went absolutely mad that night. Why is it England teams don’t perform? We don’t hold all the answers to that question.

“Have you ever heard me say it is the best league in the world? No, no, not me. What we have is a very successful league with probably six of the world’s best 10 clubs but they are world clubs with the pick of the world’s talent,” he pointed out.

“Widen your horizons. Why shouldn’t the England team come from the top 12 teams in the Championship and the bottom 10 of the Premier League if they are English and good enough?

“You mentioned Costa Rica. They played very well in the World Cup – and where are they playing their league football? We get hung up that they can’t possibly be good enough unless they are playing for Chelsea or Manchester United. Of course they can be.”

The irony is the Premier League could not have come into being without the support of the Football Association and that the man who helped propel its birth was Greg Dyke, then the head of London Weekend Television.

His hopes of securing the broadcast rights for ITV were wrecked by intervention of Alan Sugar, who combined the chairmanship of Tottenham with that of Amstrad – who made the dishes for Sky.

Now Dyke finds himself head of an FA that argues the only way to save the national team is stop the flood of foreign players choking off opportunities for young English footballers. Long ago, Dyke took a slap in the face from the Premier League. Now, he is about to receive another.

“I can only reflect the views of our clubs,” said Scudamore. “And they don’t believe that tinkering with the quotas is the solution. We believe in the investment and progress we are making in youth development. You’ve just got to produce players who are capable of holding their own at the highest level. No one is saying that is easy but we think quotas artificially protecting the species is not going to be the answer.

“I think we are on the verge of producing far more rounded, complete, intelligent footballers. We are seeing a different breed coming through, the miscreant footballer is a thing of the past,” said Scudamore who presumably has not seen photographs of Jack Grealish seemingly passed out on a street in Tenerife last month.

“I think we are going to see a much more educated kind of footballer coming through and that will require a different form of coaching. I think you will see a new type of footballer who isn’t about the old English traditions of run hard and work hard.”

There is another English tradition that has disappeared. Football, to quote the title of Alan Hudson’s autobiography, was once the working man’s ballet. Now it charges Covent Garden prices.

Five years after the Premier League was launched you could go to Roker Park and pay £8 to watch Sunderland play Manchester United. You would be standing on a terrace, the facilities would seem a little primitive now but you would still be watching the Premier League champions for what would now get you a pint of beer and a pie.

You can watch United at Sunderland next season for a minimum of £32, two and a half times more than Sunderland would have charged had ticket prices kept step with inflation. In April, Hull’s attempt to charge Liverpool fans £50 for a seat sparked a boycott. And because Manchester United and Liverpool will be a category A fixture wherever they travel, they and supporters of Chelsea and Arsenal will always pay more.

“I do understand why games are categorised,” said Scudamore. “If you have a match that won’t sell out, you may want to cut the price, whereas if you could sell it out three times over, you could probably charge more. That is no different if you run a cinema or a theatre. That is life. Is it unfair on clubs who are always in the top category? Yes it is, but that is just the fan in me.

“We are forever pressing clubs to do something with away fans but what good does a price ceiling do? A ceiling is only a price cut for those that are above it. What good is that for the others?

“Away fans create one of the things that are unique about English football – the atmosphere. We are very conscious we need to keep them happy. We have had some success; the number of away fans was up 6 per cent last season and 4 per cent the year before after eight years of decline. We have tipped it back and need to keep it going.”

Sooner or later, some away trips will become very long indeed. For many, talk of “a 39th game” made the Premier League seem arrogant and out of touch. To the fan who had put up with ever-spiralling ticket prices, to have one of those matches taken away and played in Kuala Lumpur or Los Angeles seemed another grotesque betrayal, another step taken by football away from its roots. It was howled down.

Scudamore admits to a pang of envy over how easy it is for America’s NBA or the NFL to switch regular league fixtures around the world.

The “39th game’s” inherent flaw was that a club striving against relegation might have to cross several time zones to face Chelsea, while its rivals could find themselves playing Bournemouth. The Premier League should have argued for a “38th game”, taking a full round of fixtures abroad. Their clubs employ world footballers and they have world support. The crowds in Asia and the US will want games that matter and they have the money to make it happen.

It is inevitable, although Scudamore concedes the Premier League may have to wait for someone else to make the first move: “They’ve all got an international round on the agenda. The Italians, the Germans and the Spanish are all looking at how to do it.

“We would still like to do it but it is less likely for us than it has ever been. I’d be delighted if another country got there first as it might make it more likely we would do it. It is shifting, but it’s not shifted far enough.”