The EFL and FA have decided to expand the Championship Play-offs from the 2026-27 season from four to six teams.  Under the new ruling, it would be theoretically possible to finish in eighth position in the Championship and then be promoted to the Premier League.

What is this?  Greater inclusivity or pandering to corporate greed?

In my opinion it is both.  And both are wrong.

An eighth placed team being promoted smacks of the same misplaced thinking that is overseeing a 48-team World Cup Finals this summer in the USA, Mexico and Canada, up from the previous competition’s 32 teams.  The problem?  It makes a nonsense of all the competitive matches that have come before.  48 teams in the World Cup Finals?  Why even bother with the qualifying stages?  Why stop at 48 teams?  Just invite everyone along to the party.  Let’s all be winners.

Similarly, if an eighth-place team can ultimately be promoted from the Championship, it devalues all the hard-fought league matches that have gone before it.  In fact, it makes the whole concept of a league pointless.

I fear, we are increasingly adopting an American mindset – and business model – when it comes to sport, epitomised by the MLS, where there are no relegations.  Failure is not allowed.  Everyone’s a winner.

It might sound like a Utopian vision of sport where everyone is a winner, but it is actually a step on the road to totalitarianism.

If a young Donald Trump had been told he was a failure rather than an eighth-placed success story, the world might be a less dangerous place today.

Failure and disappointment are an integral part of sport and a healthy part of living.  Nothing ever got better without failure.

Think on EFL and FA when you meddle with the Championship Play-off criteria.  What you are actually doing is initiating a butterfly effect that has far-reaching consequences.

© Donnie Blake

Donnie Blake celebrates his failure.

Donnie is the author of the football novels Artie Yard and a Very English Pickle and Artie Yard and the Bogotá Bracelet, both of which have been eighth-place success stories.