{"id":114468,"date":"2025-10-31T17:02:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T17:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/114468\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T17:02:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T17:02:07","slug":"premier-league-to-only-have-one-boxing-day-game-because-of-uefa-competitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/114468\/","title":{"rendered":"Premier League to only have one Boxing Day game &#8216;because of Uefa competitions&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The &#8220;expansion of European club competitions&#8221; has led to there being just one game on 26 December in the English top flight, says the Premier League.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Boxing Day fixtures have been a long-standing tradition in English football but this year the only Premier League game will be Manchester United&#8217;s home match with Newcastle United (20:00 GMT).<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The Premier League would like to acknowledge the circumstances that have led to a reduced number of matches on Boxing Day this season &#8211; impacting an important tradition in English football,&#8221; the league said while confirming the schedule for this year&#8217;s festive fixtures. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There are now several challenges to Premier League fixture scheduling rooted in the expansion of European club competitions &#8211; which led to a revision of our domestic calendar ahead of last season, including changes to the FA Cup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;This ultimately left the Premier League as a 33-weekend competition &#8211; fewer than previous seasons, despite being a 380-match competition since 1995.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;With fewer weekends to work with, the League is bound by how the calendar falls.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The &#8220;expansion of European club competitions&#8221; has led to there being just one game on 26 December in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-114468","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}