The Football authorities here in England are considering the idea of staging some extra league games abroad. The fundamental flaw with this is that some teams would have to play each other three times instead of the usual twice. This undermines the whole idea to such an extent that the plans must be shelved. The league table should be a completely objective measure of how a team performs over an entire season. In a cup competition there can be anomalies where a team can get a lucky goal or a strange refereeing decision. But in the league these random blips get ironed out. Everyone plays everyone else home and away and the best team on average tops the table. If extra fixtures were added then the integrity of the league would be comprimised; some teams might have to play more matches against difficult sides and others might get lots of easy games.
The second argument against this idea is that it isn't fair to the fans. A Sunderland season ticket holder would not be able to attend a match versus Fulham in Los Angeles. Their team would be taken away from them just to make money. And that is the big motivation here; money. And because money is the motivation the fixtures that get scheduled abroad might magically turn out to be Man Utd vs Chelsea or Liverpool vs Arsenal rather than Fulham versus Sunderland. In the same way that the Manchester derby was magically scheduled on top of the 50 anniversay commemorations for the Munich air disaster.
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