England absence may cost £8m

The Football Association is expected to lose £8 million in merchandising and sponsorship revenue if England fail to qualify for the European Championships in Austria and Switzerland next summer.

An FA source said: "First and foremost we are not out of it yet, we can still qualify though admittedly it is no longer in our hands. If we did fail to qualify, there would be no significant impact on our financial structure. We are an organisation that will be generating more than £200 million a year as of next summer and we are already reinvesting £60 million a year into the game at the moment.

"The organisation is more financially secure than ever before and if we did not qualify it would mean only around 3.5 per cent of our annual revenue not coming in."