Why is one of the biggest stories in football no longer mentioned?

 

 

 

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By Tony Attwood

It can be said there are three stories in football.   One of course is the clubs and their performance on the pitch, how they are doing in the league, which players they are using, which ones they should buy, and of course, for most clubs, why the manager has got it so wrong.

A second is the supporters which includes how they are treated by the clubs, the abuse given to some players, and occasionally those activities that come under the general title of “football hooliganism”.   We don’t hear it much these days, although it is still out there, as witnessed by the trashing of one of the murals in the tunnel outside Arsenal Stadium.

But the third side is now hardly mentioned at all.  Indeed, one might even think that it does not exist at all, so silent is the media.  But a little bit of investigation shows it is there, and a bit more investigation shows that it is huge. 

And that raises two questions.   One, of course, is about why the issue itself exists, and the other is why no one talks about it.  

The issue, as you may have guessed if you are a regular reader of Untold, is the abuse of young players by clubs.

Of course, part of the problem is that most people simply don’t believe child abuse by employers exists.  If you were educated in the UK you will probably have learned about the 1833 and 1847 Factory Acts, the 1842 Mines Act, the 1880 and 1899 Education Acts, the 1933 Children’s Act, the 1973 Employment of Children’s Act, the 1994 European Directive on Young People at Work… the list goes on and on.  Except it doesn’t include a “Protection of Children in Football Clubs Act.”

But how could it be, you may ask, that there could still be wholesale abuse of young people by employers going on in our country?   (And of course, beyond that, you might ask, how come a blog like Untold knows about it, while others remain ignorant?)

First, no government wants to be seen to be interfering in football which is considered a game that regulates itself.  Besides, Uefa and Fifa rules forbid government interference in football.   So MPs, ministers of sport, local councillors etc etc never want to point a finger of blame at their local club.

Second, this vision extends to the media.  Football is “our” game.  Invented and developed by people within the UK.  The notion that we have let it become a hotbed of child abuse is just intolerable.  Besides, any TV station or newspaper that started to suggest that there was child abuse going on in some of the most famous clubs in the land and sometimes involving some of the most well-known people in the game, knows that, irrespective of the truth, it would immediately lose part of its audience.  No fan wants to hear that his or her club has been involved in child abuse.

What’s more, any suggestion by a newspaper or broadcaster that there was abuse of young people happening in a club would immediately lead to the club withdrawing the free admission and special arrangements for the journalists of that publication or broadcaster.

Of course, the matter is made more complex by the fact that child abuse knows no bounds.   Take Stuart Hall as one of the most obvious examples – a regular football reporter for the BBC, who had previously been involved in “It’s a Knockout”, subsequently convicted of multiple sex offences against children.  Who would have thought it?

The fact is we are now at the stage where there are multiple parents making allegations about the abuse of young players by clubs, not just in relation to sex abuse but concerning the way the children are treated generally, but the media won’t touch the story.   We carry on as if nothing has ever happened.  An independent review into historical child sexual abuse in football has found the Football Association “did not do enough to keep children safe”.  The FA claimed it didn’t know there was a problem – presumably because the media wouldn’t print anything because of their need to keep promoting football as a positive story.

Yet we don’t have to look far for other cases – when the NSPCC started looking into the issue, it received over 800 reports of child abuse in football in the first week.   In 2016, we were told there were major investigations going on in Cheshire, Northumbria, Metropolitan and Manchester alone.  Reports emerged of a club paying huge sums to players not to reveal what happened in the past.   The following year, evidence was called for, and the first stories of abuse in Celtic Boys’ Club, emerged.  Various offenders were tried and imprisoned.

Strange, horrific coincidences emerged such as the coach Kit Carson dying on the first day of his sex abuse trial.  Manchester City later set up a multi-million pound compensation fee for victims of historical child sexual abuse carried out by former coaches at the club.   The Celtic case extended to four men who were found guilty of historical sexual abuse.  A former coach of boys at Southampton and Bournemouth was imprisoned.  while in 2019 at Bournemouth crown court, Bob Higgins is found guilty of 45 charges of indecent assault against teenage boys. Most of his victims were trainees at Southampton FC and Peterborough United.

It continued.  On 6 August 2019 we heard that young Chelsea players were targeted for years by a “prolific and manipulative sexual abuser” operating unchallenged according to a report.  In 2021 an independent review said the FA did not “do enough to keep children safe” and that there were “significant institutional failings”.

And now?   

You might be surprised to know that multiple allegations against certain clubs still being made but nothing much seems to be happening, except I hear that some clubs are saying, “mention one word of this and we’ll sue”.  Of course, running this blog I only have people’s words for such allegations, I can’t carry out investigations.  But the media seems to have stopped running the story, and I wonder why.

Is it because the clubs have said to the media, “Publish another allegation, and your publication is banned from here”?  I’ve no evidence of that, but it strikes me as possible.

But having published stories on this topic before, I still receive a lot of reports about this issue, but these are simply not covered in the media any more.  And I just wonder why.

 

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