Going global

Premier League clubs shook English football yesterday with a radical plan to launch the competition on to a world tour and trigger a marathon weekend of 10 live back-to-back matches on television. The proposal is to introduce an extra round of Barclays Premier League games and play them in five different cities around the world, with the different time zones providing a UK audience with non-stop coverage. In less than three years' time, a Manchester derby may well be staged in New York, or West Ham and Tottenham could take their bitter London rivalry to a stadium in Hong Kong or Shanghai. The proposal represents the biggest potential change to England's top flight football since the Premier League broke ranks from the Football League in 1992. The 20 top flight clubs unanimously agreed yesterday to examine the idea further. Reaction from within the game was mainly positive, giving the move a feeling of unstoppable momentum but there was strong criticism from supporters' groups, who claimed it would damage the 'integrity' of the competition, and a word of caution from the Government.
Matt Barlow, Daily Mail