Hi everyone and welcome to episode one of the Overlap podcast with me Gary Neville and our special guest, Richard Scudamore, brought to you exclusively by Skybet. Give it a subscribe, a review, a share only if you like.

Are you concerned about the power grab of the big six? It is every club's right to press from more power and more revenue.

What is right is that the institutions stay strong

because otherwise you kill the competition.

Are the rules right?

Are you comfortable that fans are protected and get a good deal?

That's a very leading question.

80 quid for a ticket, 90 quid for a ticket.

Let me stop you there because that's not true.

On this episode of The Overlop, I spoke with one of the most influential men in football.

Richard Scudemore was the executive chairman of the Premier League for 19 years.

We spoke about his early life and the big issues in the game just a week before an announcement that would stun the footballing world.

But it was clear the warning signs were already there.

Hi Richard, welcome to the Ovalap. With all my guests, I like to go back to the very beginning. So just talk to me a little bit about your childhood. I was blessed, really. Well, I have two brothers. My mum and dad, both big NHS stalwart. Mum was a nurse all her life. Dad was in regional health administration. But my dad was polio disabled, so he was in a wheelchair all the time I knew him. He got it when he was 19.

And so by the time the three of us came along, he was wheeling himself around.

We didn't have a car until I was about 10, but when we did it was like liberating for him.

He had hand controls and we used to go everywhere and used to drive around.

And he was the one who got me into football, Took me to John Atio's testimonial in 1966.

Imagine when you're six, seven years old, you've got the World Cup final, which I can still

vividly remember, going running out to the garden, telling my mum Bobby Cholten scored,

because he was my hero, still it is, bless him.

And yeah, it was just great. That was my football kind of upbringing, really, and literally committed from that day till this. How big an influence we parents then in those earlys? Must have been a great challenge. Yeah, massive. I mean, look, it's easy when you look back, you know, like all childhoods, you know, they were tough times because we didn't have that much money, as you could probably imagine. It was a tough, tough going. But looking back, it was interesting, we never fought, me and my brothers, whether there's something that takes over, we never really squabbled. Like the Nevels. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, I'm sure. But it was very formative. My dad, he had a full-time job.

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