By Tony Attwood
If you ever listen to the news in the UK you will be aware of Mohamed Al-Fayed, who died in 2023. To quote from Wiki, which is in fact quoting something that is on the news in the UK every day, he was “an Egyptian billionaire businessman whose residence and primary business interests were in the United Kingdom.” His businesses included Harrods department store and Fulham FC. Forbes estimated his wealth at US$2 billion.
For the last 25 years Fayed has been the subject of investigations into multiple cases of sexual harassment and in 2024, he became the subject of posthumous accusations of rape. These now dominate the news in England.
Since there seems to be no doubt that he is guilty as charged, (Harrods current owners appear to be accepting the truth of the claims) the question remains how did he get away with it for so long?
The answer seems to be, that complainants were not taken seriously – they were made by ordinary people against a multi-billionaire, and there was no regulator as such, willing to take on such a powerful company and its chairman.
And the link with ootball. In football in England, there is no regulator that can look into things going wrong. So when as is happening now, a complainant is making a huge fuss on social media about the way his/her son was treated, by a club, there is no independent body to take up the matter.
Complaints to the FA and the League get nowhere because on those bodies are representatives of the people who would be accused in such a case. Furthermore, most clubs have a lawyer on their board whose job it is to protect the reputation of the club, not investigate if the club has done anything wrong. The ordinary person who has a son or daughter being mistreated within a club, doesn’t have a chance.
Which is why we urgently need an independent body which can take evidence of child abuse (be it anything from child sex abuse, to the failure to keep proper records of injuries or the deliberate playing of a child when he/she is injured) and investigate it independently.
Indeed when this need is stated it seems blatantly obvious that such a Regulator is needed – and indeed some of the people outside football to whom I have spoken about this have expressed shock that there is no such regulator.
And to show just how feeble any approach to regulation is at the moment I will repeat a comment I have made before. Clubs have to keep medical records on all their junior players. But when a complaint is made the club can just say (and I have heard of some clubs saying this), “we can’t find the records.” And they get away with this because there is no regulation demanding that the clubs lodge duplicate copies of medical records of all players of all ages, with the FA. There is an easy get out, which allows clubs to overplay youngsters, and wreck their well-being, and hide the fact. And no one has done anything about it.
So the notion of a Football Regulator could be really helpful in stopping this abuse – and it is not surprising that some clubs are against this.
But now we see that Fifa and Uefa and weighing in and they too are against the notion of a Regulator, citing the fact that it involves “government interference” in sport, which Fifa’s and Uefa’s regulations prohibit. If England introduces a Regulator they say, English clubs will be banned from all international competition.
So the question arises – who would you sooner have protecting the well-being of your child if he/she signs up with a club? An independent regulator, or the club that is accused of abusing the player through playing her/him when injured? Who would you sooner have looking into potential wrongdoing: the FA, Uefa or Fifa, or an independent body, able to call upon all relevant documentation?
The fact that there are clubs out there that have used and are every day using the “lost records” excuse to hide a child’s injuries shows the urgent need for this reform – in short the urgent need for an independent regulator. But if Fifa/Uefa get their way this simply will not happen, and no child will have any protection from a club.
At present the FA and League are showing utterly no interest in taking on the clubs over the issue of child safety, because (it seems) they don’t want to rock the boat. That’s why we now need an independent regulator more than ever – to fight the corruption inherent within English football, which has been revealed through multiple child sex abuse cases.
Of course, playing a young player when he has an injury is not as appalling as child sex abuse within a club, but it is still appalling as it can injure a young player for life. Yet no one really seems to want to talk about it.
In this regard, the Football League and the FA, through not urgently pushing ahead with the need for a Football Regulator (we could have had one by now if they really cared) are behaving like all those people at Harrods who knew what Mohamed Al-Fayed was doing, but turned a blind eye. And even if they were to say they have seen no clear evidence of abuse of young players, they still should be forcing the issue of a Regulator through. Just because it could so easily happen, and because all those injury records have “gone missing”.
Does anyone have the time to look into this article and see if it is as bad as they make it out to be?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cn4zy8er71xo