By Tony Attwood
“Not a single senior FA executive even so much as has their role scrutinised in the 129 pages of this review, commissioned and paid for by the FA”
That is not me raving about the gross incompetence of the FA yet again, but actually a comment of incredulity from the Daily Telegraph.
They continue, “From chief executive Mark Bullingham, to chief operating officer Mark Burrows, to the members of the FA board and the FA executive team, there are no names mentioned – let alone held to account. As for the notion that the buck stops at the top where the biggest salaries are paid, it would be right to say that the buck does not stop – indeed, there is not anything in sight that resembles a buck.”
That is exactly the point I have been trying to make for years, and with no agreement I have ever seen anywhere in the media – until that article turned up.
Baroness Casey (pictured above) said in her press briefing in relation to the enquiry into the appalling events that took place in the Euros final, “You want people to resign and do this, that and the other. I will never get to the truth, you will never get to the truth, if all we do is simply look for scapegoats and not seek to understand what went wrong, so people can put it right again.”
It is of course the ultimate escape clause. Instead of naming people as what they are – incompetent and out of touch idiots who couldn’t organise a snowball fight in Antarctica, the whole issue is turned upside down and the word “scapegoat” is reeled out.
The only time anyone saying anything in relation to the FA in which the word scapegoat should be used in the negative is to say, “There will be no scapegoats. The whole of the Association from top to bottom is riddled with gross incompetence on a scale which, if it were a commercial operation, would have been wound up 100 years ago.”
Or if you prefer, “given its history, on moral grounds alone it should have been wound up 100 years ago.”
Either will do. But as things stand, there are no calls for anyone at the FA to resign, and no sign that anyone has learned any lesson over the Uefa final fiasco other than the fact that the FA can get away with anything. And we, the idiot taxpayers of the United Kingdom, pay for it.
So the “report” (that word really is ludicrous, the whole thing is a whitewash so huge that it must have consumed gallons of paint) doesn’t even name the stadium director as incompetent, nor on the other hand, even the officer who finally closed the turnstiles early.
The Daily Telegraph is one of the few newspapers (perhaps the only one) that is speaking out against the gross and calamitous incompetence of the FA. As it stated in its report into July 11, the warning signs at Wembley were plentiful. Indeed Casey recognises this.
For example, the 29 June game against Germany involved serious crowd misbehaviour. Before the 7 July game against there was significant disorder and although the number of fines for public order offences was only 24, most people there attest to massive problems.
So who is responsible? Of course, it is the FA. England matches are their show. But the conspiracy of silence will not allow this to be said.
The fact is that Wembley as it stands is incapable of putting on an event in which there is a fair amount of public interest, and in which fans are not 100% compliant. It could be a safe place for all events with a different group of people running the event – but not with any of the current mob. They have had years to get themselves in order, both financially (they are massively in debt), in matters of integrity (being fined by the Charities Commission for failing to keep proper records should have been enough for the government to wind the FA up without any other failings), and in terms of controlling the area, which has become more problematic because of their own activities in selling off land to try and pay off their debts.
In fact, in relation to the residential development that the FA has arranged through selling off car parks and the like, Baroness Casey of Blackstock says nothing. Yet the current facilities around Wembley contributed massively to the problem. As the Telegraph asks, “how many games where the rule of law breaks down and witnesses describe fan behaviour as “medieval” does there need to be” before the FA gets blamed for anything?
Instead, the report even tries to blame the police arguing, “A more joined-up approach between Wembley and the Met is required to managing public safety on match days.”
In short, the report says no one could have imagined such problems arising at Wembley. The reality however is that with the FA running the show, any chaos is impossible. And to imagine it, well, how about thinking back to Heysel.
With what appears to be the honorable exception of the Telegraph, yet again it’s the media compliance that enables the FA to continue on their merry way, unabated.
They will not have a word said against them and actually fall over themselves to give them credit for things even when it has nothing to do with them.
If I recall during a recent England match at Wembley the commentator somehow managed to claim the attendance was down to ‘a great job done by the FA’.
Why not go the whole hog and credit them for the ‘Beautiful green grass’ and the ‘Amazingly breathable air’.
I mean credit where credit is due.