by Our Sports Desk

FORMER sports minister Richard Caborn has hit out at plans to re-brand the world’s oldest knock-out football tournament as “commercialisation gone mad.”

Caborn, who is also on the Football Foundation board of directors said: “This is absolutely crazy. You have the greatest name in football that has so many memories for so many people and you are just selling it off.

“It is the FA’s greatest brand and they should protect it.”

The Football Association (FA) have insisted that nothing has been finalised but a proposal is expected to be submitted to the board meeting today. 

The FA are keen to land a lucrative sponsor after they failed to secure a deal last year after Budweiser held back from renewing their £9 million a year deal. 

The new deal, believed to be a £30 million three-year deal with the airline Emirates, would include the classic competition’s controversial renaming to the Emirates FA Cup — from the FA Cup with Budweiser.

The FA are claiming that any money the deal raises will be ploughed back into grass-roots football, but Caborn says the governing body should be protecting the name of the FA Cup and must go back to the drawing board.

However the Football Supporters’ Federation chairman Malcolm Clarke has said that he would not be opposed to a name change if the income is spent correctly. “The big difference between the FA and everybody else in football is the FA is a non-profit-making organisation.

“So, I don’t think we would oppose having a sponsor. I think the key question is how they use the money for the benefit of football,” he said. 

Responding to the question of whether the competition will lose its identity, he said: “There is an awful lot of football which has lost its identity since the great age of sponsorship started.” Throwing down the gauntlet to the FA, he added: “The question always is how do you balance tradition against how you use the money?

“Let’s have a debate about how this money is used. 

“At what point does the extra revenue that the FA generates for football as a whole come at an unacceptable price?”