A levy on football gambling could be introduced to fund improvements in the grass roots game following the collapse of the proposed sale of Wembley Stadium, Football Association chief executive Martin Glenn has said.

Glenn told the Daily Telegraph: “France has effectively a tax on gambling. We would call it a fair return on football gambling.

“All those betting companies use our intellectual property to have people lay bets, so why wouldn’t a small percentage of that be put into the thing that made that possible in the first place? We, as football, could approach the government and say ‘Have you thought about something like that?’

“It doesn’t need to be a big lump sum. We’ve got £64million going into the Football Foundation between the three of us (FA, Premier League and government) – imagine if it was £80m or £100m. If we could get to that it would be brilliant.”