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Summer clash between England and Scotland ruled out

25/04/2008

A football friendly between England and Scotland has been ruled out for the next year.

Plans for a clash in May at Wembley Stadium have been postponed by both countries.

Scotland boss George Burley decided the timing was not suitable, while England manager Fabio Capello ruled out having the match in 2009 because of a fixture pile-up.

Adrian Bevington, the Football Association's director of communications, said it was unlikely England would play their oldest rivals until at least 2010.

"As Gordon Smith [Scottish FA's chief executive] has said, there is certainly a desire on our part to find a suitable date to arrange a fixture with Scotland in the future," Bevington said.

"However, we won't be in a position to do so for quite some time. We were of course ready to host Scotland next month, following previous positive conversations, but unfortunately Scotland were unable to take up that fixture.

"We fully appreciate the level of interest an England-Scotland fixture would generate and of course it's something we will be discussing further with Gordon Smith and the Scottish FA."

Capello's side will face the USA in a friendly at Wembley on May 28th, followed by a trip to the Caribbean to face Trinidad and Tobago three days later.

England have not played Scotland since the Euro 2000 playoff, with the Scots winning 1-0 at Wembley but losing 2-1 on aggregate.

Plans for a four nations tournament with Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and Republic of Ireland have also been put back to 2011 because of fixture congestion.