After pleading with your boss to let you out a few minutes early, you just about make the train in time. Still uncomfortable in work attire on a jam-packed carriage, you occasionally wonder why you bother. Why not just go home, get in your slacks and have a  meal with the family after another long day?

After an hour of travelling you make it into the city centre, which is bristling with a familiar hum of commuters, students and tonight, football supporters too. But there’s little opportunity to take in these city sights; pushed for time, you hurry to the bus stop for the next part of the journey.

You arrive at the ground in a rushed fluster, but that wonderful, beautiful assault on your senses hits you as you finally take your seat. The sights, smells and sounds of football. It’s only then that it’s all been worth it. It always is. Just.

For match going supporters, the aforementioned is a standard narrative for a midweek clash. No longer can you meet your friends and family at the same time in the same place week after week for pre-game pint. It’s the television companies that dictate how long you’re permitted to socialise for pre and post-game, and the day of the week the match is on. Consequentially, a dash straight from work to the stadium is a regular occurance.

Flexibility and adaptability are requisite attributes for football supporters across the length and breadth of the country now. And as kickoff times become increasingly ridiculous and prices continue to unashamedly skyrocket, is it any wonder the blue-collar, salt-of-the-earth fan feels as though the faceless peons at the FA and Premier League are wrestling away the game they adore?

Supporters are feeling increasingly alienated as the Premier League motors along at a brisk pace into the modern age, but out of blind loyalty, love of their team and occasionally plain madness, the majority stick it out week after week anyway. But moving a regular season game abroad—something set to be proposed in the near future, per BBC—would be a tipping point for plenty of fans.

The Football Supporter’s Federation naturally reacted angrily to the prospect of the proposed game overseas, stating “once again, the idea of potentially huge changes to the game has arisen without one of the groups that matter most – the fans”.

It’s a notion that former England striker Gary Lineker wholeheartedly agrees with:

https:\/\/twitter.com/GaryLineker/status/519857920503054336?p=p

The reported venture differs from the ill-fated “39th game”, which was met by huge opposition from supporters, and the FSF expects a similarly volatile reaction this time round. And it’s a response that’d be wholly understandable on the part of match going supporters.

For football clubs the gains of this potential expansion are obvious. The Premier League is—as we’re so often told—a global brand after all, and taking the “product” into the stadiums of America, Asia and Australia in it’s most raw and most attractive format would naturally lead to stratospheric financial gains.

After all, 109,000 turned out in Michigan to watch what was an essentially meaningless game between Manchester United and Real Madrid in pre-season. Just imagine the interest a proper Premier League match would generate.

And for those across the glove who have to sample the Premier League on television or via a crackly internet stream, a live, regular season game and all the wonders that come with it would obviously be a tantalising prospect.

But as alluded to by the FSF, what about those that metronomically fill the stadiums on a weekly basis, those who are the very essence of this great game? Do they deserve to have a regular season game taken away from them? Or should those that refuse to miss their team play even a single match be expected to hurdle obstacles that push them to professional and financial breaking point?

Jock Stein famously said that “football without fans is nothing”, and little by little, your average supporter is being isolated, unappreciated and rendered as an irrelevance by the respective hierarchies currently pulling the levers behind the beautiful game.

The recent ventures of the NFL and NBA—where regular season games have been played in London—may be championed as examples of how this kind of venture can work. And they have done, expediting an ascension in popularity in both disciplines across the UK.

But they were initially piloted as one-off, annual events. After the success of the NFL UK venture, the league plays a myriad amount of fixtures across the Atlantic.

Who’s to say the Premier League abroad wouldn’t follow a similar pattern? Who’s to say that the most high profile games—there’s already been talk about a Super Bowl being held in London, per Bleacher Report—in England’s top flight won’t be boxed up and shipped overseas too?

Perhaps football supporters should accept that as a worldwide commodity, this kind of move is inevitable. Maybe they should learn to share their wonderful game with the rest of planet, just like supporters of American Football and Basketball do.

But, all sporting bias aside, the fervour that accompanies football, that instinct that makes you head straight from the office to a game or trek halfway across the country for a game on a day off, it’s incomparably unique.

That unyielding fandom is one of the key facets that make the Premier League such a desirable commodity anyway. And it’s absolutely vital, for the sake of the game and the supporters that spend their hard earned money every week, that that kind of fanaticism is conserved and not constricted.

Follow Matt on Twitter @MattJFootball