Every day the FA reveals its corruption and incompetence more fully

by Tony Attwood

 

The FA, like all national associations, allies itself utterly and totally to Fifa, an organisation known to have used, and quite probably is still using, corrupt methods in its running football.  And an organisation known to being working hand in glove with a country that uses slave labour to build its football stadia.

By being a member of Fifa the FA thus lends support to this corrupt organisation, and that must question its ability to run football properly and competently in England.

That’s the broader picture – the one that I never see or hear mentioned in the media.

But there is a second reason to question the suitabiliity of the FA to run football in England, and that is the case of Mark Sampson the ex England Women’s manager and of Greg Clarke the chair of the FA.

This story has got so many intricasies that I am not going to try and cover them all here.  If you are following the story you’ll know how many twists and turns there are in it. If not, here is a very simplistic outline – the media is full of further reports if you want the full detail.

Mark Sampson was the most recent manager of the England women’s national team.

He was sacked from this job after FA investigations into allegations of racist behaviour and remarks by Sampson, initially brought by Eniola Aluko.

During the period after the allegations, which revealed other allegations about unsuitable behaviour by Mr Sampson in relation to female players elsewhere, the FA oversaw two investigations.    The second investigation was run by a barrister, Katharine Newton, and this cleared Mark Sampson of any wrongdoing.

The FA then dismissed him but said that the dismissal was unrelated to the issues investigated by Katharine Newton.

The FA first said, “In respect of investigations into specific allegations made by Eniola Aluko in 2016, the FA stands by the findings of the independent barrister Katharine Newton’s investigation. Sampson has denied all of the accusations put to him and no evidence of wrong-doing was found.”

Then on 20 September, Sampson was sacked as the manager of the England women’s national team because of what the FA described as, “clear evidence of inappropriate and unacceptable behaviour by a coach” during his tenure as the manager of Bristol Academy prior to his appointment as England coach in 2014.

And yet an FA investigation into the allegations that led to his dismissal had concluded in 2014 that, “he did not pose a risk working in the game.”  But it also suggested that senior FA members had not read the full report when they appointed him, and indeed did not read the full report until this year when they sacked him.  That is clearly gross incompetence by senior people within the FA, and suggests they should all be removed.

Then, the Professional Footballers’ Association told Greg Clarke, chair of the FA, that they thought there had been a whitewash to “close down” the complaint against Mark Sampson and get him off the hook.

Greg Clarke replied (and I understand this is the full extent of his email).

“I’ve no idea why you are sending me this. Perhaps you could enlighten me?”

Now this is a reply from the chair of the FA – a man who had just been sent a six-page document claiming that a cover-up involving a racial allegation had taken place within his own structure.  A man in charge of an organisation that purports to stand up against racism.

So here we have the FA, allied closely to Fifa, and funded by the British tax payer, now clearly out of its depth in terms of handling a most serious set of complaints about one of its senior staff in terms of racism and inappropriate behaviour.

Just as Untold continues to ask what happened to the Community Shield money, and how much of it has gone to the victims and their families of Grenfell Tower, we have the chair of the FA asking why he should be sent an email, after the PFA had written to him to allege that, the FA’s technical director, Dan Ashworth, and director of human resources, Rachel Brace, had overseen a “sham” inquiry to clear Sampson of the allegation that he had asked Drew Spence, a mixed-raced player, how many times she had been arrested.

The question arises, just how much more incompetent, and indeed inept, not to say utterly unable to cope, the FA has to become, before the government moves in to close it down and to ensure that the money for the Grenfell Tower community, reaches the people for whom it was intended.

 

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• Fifa and Uefa: the corruption continues. Is it really just limited to the world game?