Can the Premier League beat Brexit?
This is about power in English football, and the Premier League, having accrued so much of it for so long, simply does not want to be told what to do when it comes to free movement of players, says Jack Pitt-Brooke
Richard Scudamore saw the crunch coming from miles off. Three days before the Brexit referendum, back in June 2016, the Premier League chief executive warned that a win for Leave would be utterly at odds with his competition and what it stands for.
“We travel the world being welcomed because of the fact that we are open for business, open for discussion, and open for cooperation,” Scudamore said. “There is an openness about the Premier League, which I think would be completely incongruous if we were to take the opposite position.”
But later that week 17.4m of the British electorate did take the opposite position. And two and a half years on, that incongruity Scudamore warned of is about to crash straight into the Premier League.
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