Sport & Fitness

No draws, bigger goals, smaller balls, four quarters instead of two halves and, of course, tighter shorts for the sexy ladeez – the imagination of FIFA president Sepp Blatter knows no bounds. During a reign that has seen his organisation riddled with allegations of bungs and backhanders, football’s godfather has always focused on the big issues.

Sepp’s latest wheeze is that European football should abandon its traditional calendar and instead adopt a season that begins in late February and ends in November. The winter break, insists the head of the world governing body, would be used for international matches. Feature continues

Quite apart from what cricket, rugby league and package holiday companies might have to say, Sepp has clearly forgotten something. The European Championships? That obscure little tournament called the World Cup? On the basis that not even he would contemplate playing these in December, is his plan simply to shut down the Premiership, Serie A, La Liga and the rest for six weeks? Or force the clubs to play on without their stars? I’m sure Arsène and Jose would be delighted.

Football would be ruined by a winter closedown. On Radio 5 Live, Alan Green would be deprived of his search for the coldest press box. Heroic bands of snow shovellers would not be needed at lower-league grounds staging money-spinning FA Cup ties. And cladding companies would miss out on emergency work replacing sheets of roofing blown off decrepit main stands. The game would lose clichés such as asking Santa for points, truisms about the survival prospects of clubs bottom of the table on New Year’s Day, and the season-defining excitement that goes with playing four games in ten days – a schedule that is uniquely, masochistically, British.

Last December, Lib Dem MP Bob Russell proposed a House of Commons motion that festive fixture-making should keep travelling to a minimum. His call was in response to such unseasonal gestures as Spurs vs Newcastle on New Year’s Eve. There’s a myth that it never used to be like this, but the famous Boxing Day programme of 1963, when ten First Division fixtures produced 66 goals, included West Ham vs not-very-local Blackburn (2-8) and Fulham vs Ipswich (10-1). The teams then had to travel for the returns two days later.