Just two weeks ago UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin told Sky News: “We have politics interfering into football quite a lot everywhere.”

Within days a letter was sent to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy warning there should be “no government interference in the running of football” as it pushes ahead with the introduction through legislation of an independent football regulator.

Sky News understands a similar letter was sent to the Conservatives before the election.

And while the letter dangles the prospect of English teams being banned from European competitions, that is highly unlikely to happen.

No stadium is more preferred for matches than Wembley – with three men’s and women’s Euros finals at the stadium this decade.

And the men’s 2028 European Championship being staged largely in England, as part of a UK and Ireland plan, will help to boost UEFA’s finances.

The winners of this letter becoming public are the Premier League, which has been warning about the damage that could be caused to its competition by the more regulation from an internal regulator meddling in the redistribution of cash or becoming part of the process of deciding who is fit to be an owner.

The UEFA letter almost echoes Premier League talking points by flagging “scope creep” and warnings the regulator could “expand its mandate” once introduced.

And UEFA is willing to seek assistance from politicians when expedient – particularly working with then prime minister Boris Johnson in helping to kill off the breakaway men’s European Super League in 2021 – and signing co-operation agreements with the European Commission.

And the UEFA statutes only say a member association – the FA in England’s case – could be suspended if “state authorities interfere in its affairs in such a significant way that” it would no longer be “fully responsible” for organising football, running competitions, having free and independent elections or performing its “statutory tasks”.

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The football regulator is not saying who should run the FA.

And the plans outlined would not appear to cross the threshold to be in breach of UEFA’s rules, they stick to safeguarding clubs and their financial sustainability rather than the government meddling to impose foreign policy objectives, for example, on the running of the sport.