Sampson sacked as England women’s manager for bad behaviour

LONDON: England women’s manager Mark Sampson was sacked after evidence of “inappropriate and unacceptable behaviour” during his time at a previous club.

Sampson had been the subject of accusations of racism, harassment and bullying made by former England player Eni Aluko.

But the 34yearold, cleared over those allegations, has instead been dismissed by the English Football Association (FA) following a historic safeguarding investigation into his conduct while manager of Bristol Academy.

“The FA can confirm that Mark Sampson’s contract as England women’s head coach has been terminated with immediate effect,” said an FA statement.

Sampson, who last year agreed a new contract to remain as national team coach until 2019, was axed less than 24 hours after taking charge for England’s 60 women’s World Cup qualifying win against Russia.

In response to the allegations, Sampson’s players had pointedly celebrated the first goal against Russia by running to the coach, prompting condemnation from Aluko on social media.

FA chief executive Martin Glenn admitted his organisation felt they were left with no choice but to part company with Sampson after full details of the Bristol issue emerged.

“I have to say this is the most awkward and complicated issue I have ever dealt with,” he said.“It is a different issue to the one being raised in the Eni Aluko allegations.

“In 2014, there was a safeguardingrelated complaint made about Sampson when he was coach at Bristol Academy. He had been an FA employee for just a few months.

“There was a full investigation, a proper investigation, an assessment process and when the report concluded in March 2015 he was deemed not to be a safeguarding risk. However, the full report of that investigation was only made known to me at the end of last week.

“On reading it I immediately shared it with FA chairman Greg Clarke and we were both deeply concerned with the contents of the report.

“Let’s be really clear: no laws were broken. Greg and I are not able to challenge the professional views of our safeguarding experts. We thought the conduct issues raised in the report were what the problem was.

“We felt that during his time at Bristol, Mark had overstepped the professional boundaries between player and coach and agreed that Mark’s position was untenable and we shared it with the board over the weekend.

“We had a subsequent meeting with the board because the full implications had to be assessed. The board unanimously supports our recommendation and therefore today we terminated Mark’s contract.”

Sampson’s fouryear reign was plagued by controversy.

Chelsea forward Aluko had claimed Sampson had told her to make sure her Nigerian relatives did not bring the Ebola virus to the friendly against Germany at Wembley in November 2014. — AFP