FA look to home nations to celebrate 150th anniversary

FA general secretary Alex Horne said yesterday that he has opened talks with his counterparts from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland about arranging a series of matches in 2013.

It had been thought that the negotiations were over the resurrection of the Home International tournament, which was a regular fixture in the calendar until 1984.

But Horne denied those suggestions, claiming the FA were considering marking their anniversary either by playing their neighbours in a series of friendlies or lining up a host of glamour friendlies against the biggest sides in the world at Wembley.

"We intend to celebrate the anniversary and have been talking to other British associations about a possible one-off series of games," said Horne, speaking at the official announcement of the FA's new partnership with Vauxhall.

"I passionately believe that there is an empathy for this and I think the public would welcome the matches, but whether they would welcome it on a regular basis is something we need to be careful with.

"There are a number of practical reasons why it might not necessarily be a regular event.

"There is lots of different football played across Europe and if you give a number of your friendlies away to similar opposition, you could potentially limit the ability of the team to prepare, so we just need to be careful."

Vauxhall are thought to be keen on tieing up similar deals with the football associations of the other home nations and want the tournament to go ahead.

Horne is hoping the gravitas of the series would mean teams are more willing to release their players.

"I would actually hope that with the resonance of these matches and the support we'd get from fans at the stadia, we might actually get easier release of players," he said.

Previous Home International tournaments were marred by hooliganism but Horne plans discussions with police to make sure that there is no repeat if the games go ahead in two years.

"Wembley is a new building, a new stadium. We are talking to the Met Police about how they would deal with those games but it's still very early days to be looking at these sort of logistical issues," Horne added.

The FA ended their association with Nationwide after last summer's World Cup.

The FA came in for criticism for asking for an increased offer given the current economic climate and were left without a sponsor for six months.

But with a three-and-a-half-year deal reportedly worth in excess of 20m now in the bag, Horne claims turning down Nationwide's offer and waiting for a replacement was worth it.

"Waiting was a gamble," Horne said. "But my view when we ended our conversations with Nationwide was that they were undervaluing that relationship.

"We held our nerve for six months and it has paid off."