A former Dundee United director has criticised professional English football for trying to pass itself off as the world’s first ‘premier’ league.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie said it was arrogant for the Football Association to make repeated references to the Premier League.
The Scottish Labour peer said the Premier League “was a breakaway of the Football League, on the basis of seeking a greater share of the television revenues and to get more of that for the top clubs”.
“I think it’s unfortunate that that sort of hubris has also manifested itself in the fact that the competition is now called the Premier League,” he said.
“I’m sorry, it’s not the Premier League. The Premier League was formed in 1998 in Scotland,” he said, pointing out that it was today known as the Scottish Premier League.
“When the FA was formed in 1863 it was right to call itself that because it was the first in the world.
“The Football League was formed in 1888, they were the first in the world to have that title. But the Premier League is not one that this organisation has the right to use and I wish they wouldn’t do it.”
Lord Watson said that “serving one’s own interest … was the basis in which the FA Premier League was started in 1992, there’s no two ways about it”.
He added: “I think that is symptomatic of the organisation once called the FA Premier League when it started, but the hubris to which I referred earlier has led to a break in the FA and a difficult relationship between the English Premier League, which all people outside England refer to it, and the FA. And I think that has to be recognised.”
Lord Watson’s comments came during a House of Lords debate on the economic and cultural contributions made by English Premiership football to the UK.
He resigned from United’s board after a fire-raising conviction in September 2005.