Tottenham’s home match against Everton on the opening day of the English Premier League soccer season was postponed because of this week’s rioting in London.
The riots started after a police shooting close to Spurs’ White Hart Lane stadium in north London, spreading to other parts of the capital and then throughout England. They forced postponement of last night’s exhibition match between England and the Netherlands at Wembley Stadium.
Richard Scudamore, the chief executive officer of the Premier League, said the area around the stadium couldn’t be cleaned up quickly enough to ensure the game in two days could go on in safe conditions.
“The police have done a fantastic job but they’ve been unable to hand Tottenham High Road, which has pretty much a crime scene for part of this week, back to the council until Friday night,” Scudamore said at today’s Premier League season- starting media session in central London. “That doesn’t give the council enough time to do what they need to clean it up and get a safety certificate issued.”
Scudamore said the other nine league games this weekend are still on and both the Premier League and police will have a better picture on the rest of the schedule by 6 p.m. today.
Tottenham defender Michael Dawson said he was disappointed by the postponement but fully understood.
“We’ve worked for six weeks to try and get fit and unfortunately the first game is not going to be happening for us,” Dawson said. “The most important thing is the safety, the police wouldn’t have called it off too lightly.”
Chelsea’s John Terry, who was to captain England against Holland last night, backed the decisions by the police.
“It was unfortunate for us, a lot of kids would have been at the game, but like Michael says, the safety is the most important thing,” he said.
The only other league game for the weekend to be called off so far has been Telford United’s home match with Luton in the fifth-division Blue Square Bet Premier league. Telford said in a statement on its website that West Mercia Police requested the postponement.
“Telford United, Luton Town and the Football Conference were left with little option but to agree with the request due to the unprecedented local and national circumstances,” the statement read.
To contact the reporter on this story: Bob Bensch in London at [email protected].
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Christopher Elser at [email protected]
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-1 ... adium.html
Oooh! 
