Richard Scudamore, the Premier League's chief executive, has accused Fifa's president, Sepp Blatter, of "xenophobic rhetoric" for suggesting a limit on overseas players in England's top division.

Blatter, an increasingly maligned figure in English football despite his standing in the world game, accused the Premier League this week of being too focused on making money, complaining that there are not enough home-grown players. His proposal is for a 6+5 rule, which would prevent teams in England starting with more than five non-English players.

"I do struggle [to see] where nationalism, jingoism and patriotism stops and where actually some sort of xenophobic rhetoric takes over," Scudamore said. "There is a certain amount of that in the football world when I keep getting told, 'How can English football be English football when there are not enough English players in a particular team?'

"I struggle with that when everyone bar David Beckham, who is qualified to play for England at the top level, is playing at home. I start to worry that these start to sound like the sort of attitudes that are quite difficult to justify in my football world, and I, for one, am not going to allow that agenda to be washed over. There is nobody more proud of the England football team than me but we can't let that spill over into fear and this sort of agenda."

Scudamore said the Premier League should be a platform for any player, regardless of race or nationality. "We have a quality agenda," he said. "What we want are the best players. We would like a huge proportion of those best players to be English – that would tick every box. But we've never had a restriction. The fact is, if you are good enough you will get a chance. The challenge for the English talent is to hold their own and that is what is happening at the moment.

"We get accused of not being pro-English because we have so many foreign players but we also have so many English players and they are playing against the best, week in and week out. It is possible to be a world league and also an English league."

Scudamore was speaking at the launch of Equality Standard, a framework of measures set out by the anti-discrimination group Kick It Out. The event was also attended by the Chelsea-supporting writer and comedian David Baddiel, who outlined his plans to tackle anti-Semitism among supporters. Baddiel intends to make a short film, featuring Premier League footballers, which would be played at stadiums.