Everton supporters have already given strong response to controversial concept
ECHO Everton reporter Chris Beesley has his say on the Keep Football Home movement after Blues supporters delivered their overwhelming verdict to the concept of playing domestic league fixtures overseas
ECHO Everton reporter Chris Beesley has covered Everton and Liverpool both in the Premier League and abroad since 2005. He cut his teeth in professional sports journalism at the Ellesmere Port Pioneer and then the Welsh edition of the Daily Post, where he also covered Manchester United. Prior to that he worked on the student newspaper Pluto at the University of Central Lancashire, a role in which he first encountered David Moyes. Chris is well-known for his sartorial elegance and the aforementioned Scottish manager once enquired of him at a press conference: “Is that your dad’s suit you’ve got on?” while the tradition continued in 2023 with new Blues boss Sean Dyche complimenting him on his smart appearance.
Evertonians have already delivered an overwhelming response of no to the prospect of overseas games in the Premier League.
Blues supporters are among more than 430 groups across 27 nations claiming to represent three million European fans as part of the Keep Football Home movement. The group is fighting to prevent domestic league games being played overseas.
Both the Everton Fans Forum and Everton Fan Advisory Board are among Football Supporters Europe (FSE), who are expressing their firm opposition to ongoing attempts to what they say are attempts to subvert the rules of the game by allowing leagues to relocate fixtures elsewhere around the world. This summer, Italy and Spain’s football federations have unveiled plans to stage league fixtures in Australia and the United States and are seeking permission from FIFA and UEFA.
If successful, La Liga clubs Barcelona and Villarreal will face each other in Miami in December in what would be the first European league fixture to be played abroad and if permission is granted, Serie A sides AC Milan and Como will meet in Perth, Australia, in February. As detailed in an ECHO article on Thursday, FSE say such proposals are a direct attack on the essence of football.
In polls conducted last summer, the Everton Fan Advisory Board revealed that 83% of the EFC International Supporter Group Leads were against the concept while an online poll on X (formerly Twitter) saw 97% of over two thousand replies rejecting the idea.
Other one-off matches, such as the Italian Super Cup and Spanish Super Cup, have been held abroad in recent years. The idea of the Premier League playing an extra round – the infamous ‘39th game’ – outside England was raised in 2008 but the plans were shelved after criticism from fans and the media.
Despite predecessor Richard Scudamore claiming in 2014 that clubs were still keen on the idea, current Premier League chief executive Richard Masters downplayed such a scenario in August. He said: “I don’t think it changes the Premier League’s view on this at all, we don’t have any plans to play matches abroad. It’s not anywhere near my in-tray and it’s not a debate around our table.”
The Premier League has become such a lucrative cash cow that it doesn’t need to go on the road but it’s curious that a couple of continental football Behemoths Barcelona and Milan – both part of the initial ‘dirty dozen’ who threatened to join a shameful European Super League, declaring themselves the game’s elite in perpetuity – are at the centre of these current proposals.
For most of the second half of the 20th century, Italy’s Serie A ruled the roost when it came to paying the biggest wages in football and Milan were the dominant force in the final decade of that era, but now they find themselves a shadow of their former selves.
Despite being one half of the domestic rivals who are the biggest two clubs on the planet, along with arch enemies Real Madrid, Barcelona, have been dogged by financial problems in recent years. The institution that high-handedly proclaims: “Mes que un club” (more than a club), and for years shunned shirt sponsorship, initially wearing the UNICEF children’s charity logo on their jerseys before striking a deal with the Qatar Foundation in 2011, must also be casting envious glances towards the riches now enjoyed by teams in England’s top flight.
However, wherever you come from in European club football, teams are unique to their community. The understandable furious backlash in 2021 from fans towards the selfish plans for a European Super League centred around the concept of the proposed breakaway competition threatening to fly in the face of over a century of sporting integrity throughout football created by the organic pyramid system and instead manufacture a synthetic closed shop private members’ club while those not involved would be left to wither and die.
Everton are the only founder members of both the Football
