Catalonia and the basque region are part of spain!
what a stupid idea, how far would standards drop once this as introduced? rangers?celtic?championship clubs?cmon….
the premierhsip is fine the way it is, competing in all major tournaments and dominating most…i dont wanna know how fast the era of english clubs dominating the world of football would end if these refoms were to take place

Firstly, Valencia is not in Catalonia, it is in the Comunitat (or Generalitat) Valenciana, which is another autonomous region with the same level or autonomy and devolution as Catalonia. Yes, they share a common language (Valencian is very similar to Catalan) but are autonomous from one another and devolved from Spain. Whilst Valencia and Catalonia and the Basques do all have (non-UEFA acknowledged) national football sides, the comparison is not the same because their national sides are not acknowledged, whilst England, Scotland, Wales etc are.

Point number 2. Monaco is even less pertinent. Monaco doesn’t have a league of its own, and doesn’t have a national side. So the Monaco club team has no option BUT to play in France. Were Monaco to have any other option then there would certainly be grounds to accuse Platini of hypocrisy in this case. But there aren’t.

However, worry not: there are two examples. All Liechtenstein clubs play in the Swiss league, and the main team, FC Vaduz, plays in the Swiss top division. There is no national league in Liechtenstein, but unlike Monaco there IS a national side. Interestingly, there is also a Liechtenstein cup, the winner of which gets a UEFA cup berth, and the B and C teams are eligible to enter (as used to happen in Spain years ago, but no longer happens in most places). So FC Vaduz can qualify for Europe both by winning the Liechtenstein cup and the Swiss cup/league. Murky waters indeed, a bit like Cardiff last summer, who were told by UEFA that they would be given a berth had they beaten Pompey, even though the English FA said they couldn’t because they were already knocked out from the Welsh cup (or something like that).

Another factoid, one perhaps even more relevant. Andorra HAS a national team, HAS a national cup and a league and gets berths into European club competitions, yet has also a team, FC Andorra, in the Spanish regional leagues, and ironically a lot of the Andorran national team players play in FC Andorra (Spanish league), and not in many of the teams that play in Andorra itself and which can qualify for Europe by winning Andorran league and cup. Even more ironic is that FC Andorra shares the same ground with all the Andorra-based Andorran teams. It makes one wonder how poor the teams must be that play for Andorran league clubs like Constelació, Santa Coloma, FC Rànger’s, CE Principat etc. FC Andorra plays in Catalan Primera Territorial, which is in Level 7 of the Spanish pyramid. It would be the same as Wales fielding loads of Colwyn Bay players (Colwyn Bay plays in Level 8 of the English league, which is probably similar to Level 7 of the Spanish league). How bad must Andorran first division be! And yet they get UEFA and Champions league births. Anyone dreaming of playing in Europe one day should seriously consider moving to Andorra because their chances must be huge… In fact, Fernando Silva, Andorra’s second best striker and who has played in all the World Cup qualifiers including against England. plays for the lower Andorran leagues!

More to the point is: were Celtic, or Cardiff for that matter, ever to play in Europe thanks to winning a trophy in a future English Premiership league, would they have the St George’s flag beside their name when UEFA pulls their country out of the big wine glass? Because technically, that’s the league they belong to! Now that would make an interesting title!!

While you do make a good point with all of the Welsh clubs in the English FA, and with Monaco playing in the French League, the Spanish teams all play in the same country, Spain. Yes, there are separatist movements and they are from different regions with different cultures, languages, etc, but they are still in the same country. You can think of Scotland, England, Wales, and N. Ireland as the same United Kingdom, but football has never, and will never think of those four as one country.

How does eliminating four games from such a long season really benefit the English national team? Slightly less fixture congestion? I don’t believe that England’s problem since 1992 has been the fixture congestion of the EPL. I think most of it can be attributed to the fact that it’s really hard to win a World Cup.

I believe money is the reason a major part of the proposal will not work. Who will be willing to give up two home games and two away games? The clubs need that revenue. Adding Scottish teams will not significantly increase viewership on television. Most of the games are watched by Scottish supporters anyway. As for the parachute payments: Where did 30 millon come from? Is that television revenue for this new second division? How do we know that someone would pay that amount? Parachute payments certainly do help, but will they remain at that level? Will they go up? Down? Who knows? I don’t think anyone knows right now.

I hope this doesn’t happen. For starters, I don’t want to see Scottish football sink into the depths of irrelevancy like Ireland. I don’t want to see fewer club games. I don’t want to see the remaining Football League and Conference clubs hurt. This would take money away from them. It would take players away from them, even more so than the current EPL setup.