THE FA Cup Final could be replaced by a Super Bowl-style Premiership play-off final at Wembley as part of plans to revamp the top level of English football along American football lines. Highly-placed sources at the Premier League and FA have confirmed a restructuring scheme is under consideration that would also allow 12 more clubs into an expanded Premiership but remove some traditional rivalries from the fixture list.

Premiership chairmen and chief executives have long cast envious eyes at the commercial success of the NFL (National Football League) and are also considering adopting many of its commercial measures such as salary caps and revenue-sharing, but it is the plans to copy the NFL’s 32-team structure that will cause most consternation among supporters.

As well as the introduction into the Premiership of end-of-season play-offs — which will also determine European places — the proposals call for the splitting of the 32 teams into two “conferences”, as happens in the NFL, further split into four four-team divisions, with each division champions going forward into the play-offs. However, in order to accommodate 12 extra teams while ensuring that every club plays every other club at least once, teams will only be guaranteed home-and-away fixtures against opponents in their own division.

According to an early draft of a possible league structure, that could mean that Manchester United and Liverpool, for instance, would play each other only once per season, at Old Trafford and Anfield in alternate campaigns, unless they were to meet in the play-off final. Arsenal versus Chelsea would suffer the same fate according to the proposals.

It will also be impossible for teams in the same conference to meet in the final. That immediately rules out Chelsea playing Manchester United in the Wembley showpiece, although they could meet at the semi-final stage. As a result, with only the two play-off finalists guaranteed direct entry into the Champions League, the loser of the semifinal would go into the third qualifying round of the premier European competition, as the clubs finishing third and fourth in the Premiership do under the present system.

It could be worse. In the NFL, local rivals such as the New York Giants and New York Jets are in different conferences and seldom play one another. The Premiership scheme does not, as it stands, separate Arsenal and Tottenham, Liverpool and Everton or the two Manchester clubs.

Moreover, those who claim that smaller clubs cannot compete under the present system may be encouraged by the adoption of an NFL method of helping “competitive balance” by giving less successful teams an easier schedule the next season.Teams will play three extra games against the other teams in their conference who finished in the same position the previous season. The NFL realigned its structure three years ago, a move that has been generally considered a success. “Realignment kept the most significant of the old rivalries intact, while maintaining a varied schedule that allows fans to see the top teams,” an insider said. “Our schedule also helps to promote competitive balance.”

At the moment, the two conferences are designated A and B, although consideration has been given to naming them after leading figures from the game’s history, with Sir Matt Busby and Bill Shankly among the favourites.

Should the Cup Final be replaced by a play-off?

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