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KEIR RADNEDGE: WHOSE GAME IS IT?

4:15pm Thursday, 18th February 2010

Football club directors everywhere face the same challenge: how to fit a quart into a pint pot. That may be representing the issue in an old-fashioned imperial way but it's the same, for example, on both sides of the English Channel (or, if you prefer, La Manche).

Suddenly the Premier League's 20 members are debating the pros and cons of a play-off series to decide the lucrative, all-important fourth place.

This would, of course, mean extra matches and hence extra revenue which is a prospect of appeal to just about every finance and commercial director.

The only snag is how to find an extra two weeks at the end of the season, in and around the Champions League Final weekend, either before or after the FA Cup Final and, of course, before the finals every other year of the World Cup or European Championship or, in-between, before the early-June national team qualification matches.

Now factor in increasing pressure for some sort of mid-winter break, take into account the need to clear a sporting gap in August 2012 for the Olympic Games.

Not easy is it?

But in these recessionary times the need to find more and more ways of generating income are easily understood.

The trouble is that this can be counter-productive. Frederic Thiriez, president of the French league, knows that only too well. As he once told me: 'There was a mindset once in our game that the more matches we could fit in to the season then the more we could sell to television and the more money we would make. But it wasn't quite like that.'

In France the game reached TV saturation point five years ago; TV channels started to argue the price down. Now the French clubs do not try to find excuses for more matches but are trying to repackage the three competitions they have: league, league cup and French cup.

As in England, the league cup is played out in midweek with the final in early spring. Now the French federation is considering a suggestion that the league cup should be played out in the autumn with the final being the climax of the first, pre-Christmas half of the season.

Not that this is certain to go through. For one thing, the federation and the league disagree on whether the managers' association and the players' union should be involved in the discussions.

'I can't believe it,' says Pierre Repellini, vice-chairman of the managers. 'Whose game is it?

Good question!

Keir Radnedge is one of the foremost observers of international soccer. He has reported at every World Cup since 1966 and is a regular contributor to TV, radio, newspapers and magazines worldwide. He is London-based Editor of SportsFeatures.com and is chairman of the Football Commission of the International Sports Press Association (AIPS).