Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden says "good progress" is being made as football looks to return by mid-June.
Premier League clubs will vote on a return to training on Monday, with English football having been suspended since mid-March due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
And Dowden's latest suggestion that the Government are backing the return of top-flight football will be a welcome boost to the clubs ahead of their crisis meeting.
"I had some very constructive discussions on Thursday with the FA, the EFL and the Premier League," said Dowden.
"We are working hard with them to try and get it back, aiming for mid-June, but the number one test if public safety.
"They, like a lot of other sports we're looking at returning behind closed doors, have met with Public Health England several times to look at the safety.
"If we can sort that out then we will look to resume by mid-June. We're making good progress."
Dowden added there are plans for changes to the way some games are broadcast - including free-to-air matches.
He said: "As part of that I'm hoping we can have something a bit more ambitious with some more free-to-air matches for people to watch from home because that would be helpful in terms of discouraging people from leaving their home to watch it.
“There are various options. It wouldn’t all be free to air, but for example there is a rule at the moment that at 3pm you can’t show matches on TV because people were watching it in the football stadiums.
"Clearly that’s not going to be the case any more so some of those slots may be available for free to air so we’re looking to see whether we could do that as part of the wider broadcast package.
“It wouldn’t be all of it because a lot of these already have the rights sold.”
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