Abuse of young players in football clubs: authorities duck, but action is happening

 

• Arsenal desperately need a striker because you can’t score goals with kids. (Oh!)

By Tony Attwood

If you are a regular reader you will know that I have brought up the issue of the abuse of young players in football clubs several times – both the sexual abuse of which there have been some prosecutions, and the physical abuse of playing youngsters even when they are injured, simply because the team is short of players, or the coach of the junior side thinks the young player is being soft and needs to “man up”.  And of course others are reporting it too.  See also here.    And alarmingly here.

However it is also a topic I tend to be rather wary of, because although there are multiple allegations around, I of course, don’t have any way of evaluating the evidence.

But I think I can clearly say that from reading the issues being raised on Linkedin etc the same issue keeps coming up – complaints are made about the way young people are treated by some clubs, but neither the FA, nor the relevant league, nor the club’s directors,  take any notice until court action starts.  

I can’t prove this is a national scandal, but from the level of chat happening on Linedin it most certainly looks that way to me.

Now, some time ago, I came up with what I thought was one very simple step forward which, although it would not resolve matters completely, most certainly could help.  It was that every time a player aged 18 or younger was injured, then a copy of his/her medical record in relation to that injury should be sent directly to the FA who would house it on their computer system. 

The name of the player, the coach and the club should be listed so that from time to time, the FA could track these events and see if certain clubs or indeed certain adults were involved in more injury-related events than one would expect in the normal course of things.  (This could be in relation to a club forcing a young player to play, even when injured, because the club was short of a player, or were really desperate for the player to play, no matter what).  When such a case was found, my thought was that the FA could launch its own investigation, or indeed there could be a police investigation into abuse if the player was of a young age.

The reason this is so important (or perhaps I should say, it seems so important to me, and all the people I have spoken to) is when an allegation is made against a member of the youth coaching staff, the complainant can be told that the records relating to the player have been lost.   Likewise, if a complaint is made later by a parent, the club may well say “the medical records are missing,” and that brings the enquiry to a close.

Now I suspect this might be a loophole that many clubs want to exploit – for if they have had a child abuser working on their coaching staff the last thing they want is for there to be an enquiry which can pull up the records of that young player’s injuries or his/her reporting of the coach’s unacceptable behaviour.

So young players are told that all their injuries should be dealt with by the club, not by their home GP, which means no one else gets to see what’s going on.

This situation seems to me to be a total scandal, and one that implicates the FA for not resolving it, and implicates the clubs for not setting up systems so that if one of their coaching team is found to be up to no good vis a vis the players, he/she can be quickly moved on without publicity.

Putting a digital copy of a child’s medical records in a central digital registry from which records cannot be removed is a simple and effective way around the problem that is now being talked about daily on discussion forums, but about which the clubs are doing nothing.

Of course, I don’t have the evidence of corruption that would enable the FA or the Leagues to take action.  But protecting young players is logical and obvious, and it shouldn’t need me to point that out to the FA or anyone else.

Before I retired, I was chair of a modest-sized plc, and when I saw corruption or illegality in the area we dealt with, I reported it to the police.  There was no publicity suggesting I had made the call, but I got thanks from the authorities, and a very firm “thank you” for doing my duty as a citizen and those guilty got convictions.  I was also told on more than one occasion, “if only more people would do the responsible thing and let us know.”  Likewise, if I was asked to attend court as a witness, I always agreed  – and in fact never had to attend, because once the defendants were told there was a witness to their activities who would attend, they switched their plea to guilty.

Why football thinks it should not be part of the same sort of system of law and order, I have no idea, but it really is worrying that they don’t.  There are serious and important complaints about the way clubs treat young players that are circulating on social media on a daily basis.  It is time the authorities recognised this and started investigating.

And one thing is for sure: if they don’t, then those who have a complaint will eventually blow the whole system wide open.  LinkedIn is already full of such accusations. Football hasn’t got long to put its house in order.