The Archive

Paul Joyce reports on Germany's reaction to the Game 39 proposals

Support for Richard Scudamore’s 39th step has been non-existent in the German media. “Why do they still bother playing in England at all?” asked the left-wing newspaper Taz. “They may as well sell the whole circus to south-east Asia and put up giant screens in English stadiums.” The Berlin-based daily Der Tagesspiegel saw the Premier League’s expansionism as part of a post-Empire identity crisis: “While many Englishmen view this internationalisation as a stigma, they profit from it financially and it forms the basis of their sporting success. And the English are proud of this success.”

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The US market is not exactly enthralled with the prospect of another foreign football circus passing through town as they see plenty of them already. Mike Woitalla reports from the land of opportunity

Forgive us if the prospect of English Premier League games in the United States didn’t get us all giddy. We’ve got so much soccer here already that a couple more games just wouldn’t be a very big deal. In 2007, the USA hosted more than 60 matches between foreign clubs. Include games that pitted visiting clubs against American teams and the figure passes 100. Besides the touring clubs, 40 national-team matches – not including the USA’s own 12 games – took place on our soil in 2007. And that’s not counting when Haiti, Fiji and China played against club teams.

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The Premier League have misjudged the market in China once already, Dominic Fitzsimmons writes

China, the world’s most populous country and one visited by Premier League clubs each year, may seem to be prime territory for Game 39, but a pay-TV deal that has effectively taken the “world’s biggest league” off the air in the world’s biggest TV market has undermined its popularity. By pricing ordinary fans out of a chance to watch matches, the deal may undermine Richard Scudamore’s new scheme.

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The fuss over the timing of Ghana 2008 helped put the tournament centre-stage around the world – and those watching can only have been impressed, writes Alan Sharif Duncan

There can be no turning back now for African football. Largely overlooked a decade ago as little more than the continental confederation’s nativity play, the Africa Cup of Nations is being transformed into something of a global sporting phenomenon. While there will be those who will mourn its relative loss of innocence to a world of sponsors, TV rights and unprecedented western media scrutiny, Ghana 2008 was, in terms of the quality of football alone, a timely coming of age – two years before South Africa hosts the World Cup.

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The Premier League feels once again the need for change. "Game 39" is the radical new idea

A new phrase entered football last month, one that we will be hearing a lot more of. The Premier League’s “Game 39” plan, involving an extra round of matches being played at five venues in other countries, met with almost universal derision when it was announced by chief executive Richard Scudamore in early February. The media and supporters’ groups condemned it straight away, and were soon followed by football officials from around the world. Even the FA, not known for taking an adversarial line with the Premier League, chanced some mild criticism of the plan once FIFA’s Sepp Blatter had dismissed it out of hand.

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