The 39th step is one too far for game that sold out years ago

Six in LA, four in New York, 10 in China, a couple in Sydney, and so on ... and wind up with a play-off weekend at Wembley, replete with hot dog sellers in the stands, cheerleaders and "overtime".

Alright, it sounds hysterical to project a travelling circus future from Richard Scudamore's proposal that from 2011, clubs play one game — the 39th step of the season — abroad.

But more disturbing than the "thin end of the wedge" aspect is the message it reinforces: that where there is yet more money to be made by a sport already suffocating from all the treasury notes stuffed in its mouth by broadcasters here and around the globe, whatever remains of the English game's special character must blithely be jettisoned.

Already the top division has been rendered an ersatz version of what it was. The stadiums have improved beyond recognition, of course, as has the quality of football played in them, and yet it's still much less pleasurable.

Like a middle-aged couple who have lived their entire married life in a cosy, run down old semi on one side of town, and move to a gleaming new bungalow that still smells of paint on the other, you never quite reconcile yourself to the gleaming sterility. It's cleaner, brighter and much, much swankier. It's just not quite ours any more.

The demotion of 3pm on Saturday to the role of warm-up man for the headline acts of the following day, to sate the rapacious hunger of Rupert Murdoch's Sky, remains a dereliction of any authority's duty to safeguard the uniqueness of its charge.

Permitting any passing foreign plutocrat to snaffle a club with no real investigation into how he came by his billions, and allowing other clubs to become hostage to the fluctuating fortunes of their foreign owners, has reduced the League to a hybrid of a public relations tool for the deeply dubious and unfettered commodities market. With the ratio of foreign players and foreign coaches soon enough to be matched by owners, this division ceased to be English a while ago in any regard other than the kind of purely technical sense that permits the US embassy in Grosvenor Square to claim it stands on American soil.

So let the money-chasers of the Premier League and the giant clubs that control it (what is this nonsense if not the Big Four chasing merchandising opportunities?) ape the NFL by going to Beijing or New York in 2011.

Let them double the games until every club can sell its ground to Tesco, and raise capital for even more foreign players and coaches.

The soul of what we dinosaurs still ruefully remember as the First Division was sold to Murdoch and any other passing wallet years ago. There simply isn't anything to protect that's remotely worth saving any more..

'Why not play )on the road and wind up at Wembley complete with cheerleaders, hot dogs and overtime?'