FA Cup may soon be a midweek event with replays ditched
The growing importance of televised Premier League matches at weekends is set to signal the end of FA Cup replays from the third round.
The PL, whose summer meeting was dominated by discussion of televised football, primarily see themselves as a weekend competition and are looking at ways they can engineer one or two new slots for football on Saturdays and Sundays when their rights have the most value.
Friday nights have not proved a success, and Monday nights are no good for the top clubs involved in European competition.
The FA Cup could soon become a midweek competition as chiefs look to free up weekends
The ultimate goal for the Football Association is to create a winter break in English football
The FA’s big ambition is for a winter break to help the tournament fortunes of the national team; to make that happen their main bargaining chip with the Premier League is to give up some FA Cup weekends.
This could be done by abolishing Cup replays from the third round and turning the competition into primarily a midweek event.
Talks on revamping the calendar are on the agenda of both the FA and Premier League, with club bosses believing that the inevitable outcome will be the loss of replays in the FA Cup third, fourth and fifth rounds and the introduction of a winter break.
The scars of Euro 2016 are not deep enough to deter the FA from returning to the Chantilly base they used for that doomed tournament.
England were set to return to the same Auberge du Paume Hotel outside Paris before Tuesday’s friendly against France but it was fully booked.
England planned to head back to their Euro 2016 hotel this week but it was fully booked
Arsene Wenger may divide opinion among Arsenal fans but he remains football royalty in his native France.
So much so that French president Emmanuel Macron broke away from his entourage at the Stade de France ahead of the France- England match in order to chat with the Arsenal manager in the VIP section. And Macron’s guest Theresa May followed suit in greeting Wenger.
Emmanuel Macron (second left) met Arsene Wenger during the France-England game in Paris
Scotland rugby team doctor James Robson, who was the chief medical officer on six previous British Lions tours — forging a close bond with the players — is understood to be distraught at not being selected for the tour of New Zealand.
The Lions opted instead for Irishman Eanna Falvey, who worked under Robson on the 2013 trip to Australia.
Kasper lured by Luca
Manchester United goalkeeping great Peter Schmeichel is said to be responsible for his son Kasper changing agents in his desire to leave Leicester.
Schmeichel Jnr still has four years left on his £100,000-a-week deal at Leicester, negotiated by his former advisers Triple S, who have helped their client improve his earnings from £10,000 a week when he joined the club.
Triple S were advising Schmeichel, who has just had an ankle operation, that it would be very difficult for him to improve on his Leicester terms. But Kasper, with father Peter allegedly pulling the strings, has opted to leave Wayne Rooney’s agents for UK-based Italian Luca Bascherini’s stable. However, the big-money move has yet to materialise.
Kasper Schmeichel has been lured away from his old agent, with the help of his dad Peter
The Premier League tend to stamp their feet if the FA stage an event in the build-up to one of their matches. Yet the PL shamelessly published next season’s fixture list yesterday a day after England’s final game of the season — reclaiming the agenda for club football with indecent haste. A PL spokesman said the date was fixed three months ago.
Old-school Shrewsbury Town chairman Roland Wycherley, with 21 years in the post, doesn’t seem to take the agenda of the Football League summer summit in Vilamoura, Portugal too seriously.
According to other club delegates, Roland prefers to relax around the swimming pool rather than attend meetings, to which he sends club secretary Jayne Bebb to report back.