When the meeting at the Churchill Hotel had concluded and the various executives had left, no doubt dreaming of all the lovely global lolly that would soon be flowing through the game, to reappear as a pool of vomit at the end of a night of romance with Ashley Cole, or as a Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 Roadster that the twentysomething owner is banned from driving, one question was left hanging in the air.

What if the Spanish and Italian leagues look at what English football is planning to do to the most sacred concepts of the domestic game, the tenet of the level playing field, of loyalty to the supporters, of the symmetrical league as the true arbiter of the best team, suppose they look at the way the Premier League is prepared to abandon these principles for a sack of cash and just laugh and laugh and laugh.

There is no rush to beat English football to Sydney in January 2011, no attempt to follow Manchester United or Bolton Wanderers to Bangkok, instead the representatives of the leagues of the leading football nations in Europe – the ones that win the odd World Cup – exchange smirks and then begin giggling. Their shoulders gradually shake until they dissolve helpless into guffaws and howls, legs kicking in convulsive spasms. Can you believe what they have done, they gasp, between rapid breaths. They have turned their competition into a silly little circus.

What type of league is decided by an odd number of matches anyway? What type of league is hawked to the highest bidder, or left at the mercy of a random draw? What type of league risks alienating people that will be there for it week in, week out, whose investment is total, to flutter its eyelashes at a part-time fan whose loyalty will never be tested over a wet weekend away to West Bromwich Albion? Still, at least the local supporter now knows what matters to the Premier League. Not him, apparently. Not so much.

To be fair to Richard Scudamore, the Premier League chief executive, if this country ever needs a man to front up an unpalatable idea – a foreign war fought at vast cost on an entirely specious basis, for instance – he is the man for the job. The Government missed a trick by not getting him in over Iraq. “Yeah, Rich, there’s no weapons. No, no weapons at all, mate. Nothing. No, it gets worse. All the stuff he has got – it turns out we sold it to him. I know, he’s even got the receipts. That’s where you come in, mate. Could you talk it up? I don’t know, some old guff about strategy and integrity, I suppose. You know what to say. If you can get Wigan Athletic to Kuala Lumpur, anything’s possible.”

So yesterday Scudamore sat before an audience that was sceptical to say the least and played an absolute blinder. He presented the move as a logical response to globalisation, claimed it was not the thin end of the wedge, pledged there would be no expansion of the international round – as the proposal has been tagged – in the next ten years, insisted it would not affect the fairness of the competition, he even promised that the most loyal fans would not be left stranded, as if the prospect of a match on the other side of the planet is affordable to a supporter who has already followed his team home and away throughout England and Europe.

There were moments when it was possible to believe him. He said the Premier League would only go where it was welcome and, challenged on potential hosts that are not so tolerant – Israeli passport-holders such as Yossi Benayoun would be banned from entering some Middle Eastern states, for instance – he immediately excluded those nations from the bidding.

It was a tough room. A lesser performer would have been skewered. Instead, Scudamore remained unruffled, persuasive, diplomatic. The chap from Sky News asked why the move could not be put to a vote of the fans. The Premier League PR man began to panic at this mention of the disenfranchised but Scudamore, at his side, remained calm. The chief executive patiently explained that, if the fans were allowed to vote on everything, kick-off times would have remained at 3pm on Saturday afternoon for all matches and then where would a certain television station be? Touché.

Yet there is a reason the mention of supporters brought a shiver. Scudamore knew he would be in for a rough ride, but if the room was high on cynicism, it was low on season ticket-holders. The real anger would be bubbling up from the fans, those who were now realising that no percentage of their pay cheque will ever be enough for football’s new aristocracy, and no well-rehearsed speech was going to placate them. Many will only see this as a further act of rejection from a league that is already distancing itself from reality. Sure enough, the early reaction has been overwhelmingly negative. Scudamore’s arguments are slick, but they do not bear analysis.

He said the league would not lose integrity because the extra game was only a variable like facing a team with nothing to play for on the last day – as West Ham United did last year, avoiding relegation with a win against a Manchester United side already crowned champions. He said the international draw that will ultimately pair teams up – first versus eleventh, and so on down the league, is an early suggestion – is only a twist of fate, such as getting a home tie in the FA Cup.

He misses the point, which is that any cup has a random factor, which is why the league is regarded as the true competition of worth. And a soft final game is something over which the Premier League has no control – here the league has factored in its weakness, the chance that the whole season could be affected by a fluke of a fixture, taking place on the other side of the world, for a bounty. It gives the elite clubs an advantage before a ball has been kicked.

For two weeks in January, English football is now on sale to the highest bidder. One can only hope the mayor of Kabul is thinking big right now; or the mayor of Baghdad.