The EFL has raised the stakes in its standoff with the Premier League over the future of English football, stating there will be no easing of the fixture list without a deal for financial redistribution.
In an announcement made several months earlier than is customary, the EFL revealed its schedule for the 2024-25 season on Wednesday, confirming two-leg semi-finals for the Carabao Cup.
An end to two-leg ties and cup replays has been part of broader demands made by the Premier League during tortuous negotiations over redistribution that will soon enter a third year. But according to the EFL’s chief executive, Trevor Birch, the calendar will stay the same until the top flight offers more cash for the rest of the pyramid.
“Whilst the fixture calendar remains a shared asset across the EFL, Premier League and Football Association, additional pressures from revamped European competitions means that scheduling across the season remains challenging and complex, so it requires a whole game response to find a solution,” Birch said.
“As it stands there is no agreement in place to make any changes to the Carabao Cup’s two-legged semi-final format, which continues to provide significant financial benefit to EFL clubs.
“The league [EFL] remains committed to a review of the calendar, but any significant changes cannot be made unilaterally, and would need to come with significant levels of compensation and adopted as part of any new distribution deal with the Premier League and its clubs.”
The decision by the EFL to confirm its position for next season with half of the current term still to go, and to do so in public, reflects the stakes at play. The government has promised to bring its football governance bill to parliament imminently and with it the promise of an independent regulator for the English game, but the scope of that regime is still to be decided.
On Monday the EFL hosted a dinner at the House of Lords for club executives and MPs at which the need for the regulator to deliver sustainability for the English game was argued for by the EFL chair, Rick Parry. This is widely understood to mean a mixture of greater redistribution and cost controls, with agreement yet to be reached between the EFL and the Premier League over the levels of each.
There is a growing sense that some inside the EFL believe the regulator should settle the dispute and such sentiments have been echoed by influential voices from inside the global game. Speaking in a personal capacity at the dinner, the deputy secretary general of Fifa, Alasdair Bell, said that setting levels of redistribution for the game would “fall squarely” within the regulator’s anticipated remit. “You wouldn’t expect football to be able to strike a deal,” he said. “The Premier League doesn’t exist just at one moment in time and this needs to be factored into what is a fair settlement for football. It needs a long-term decision not a series of ad hoc deals.”
