HOWCAN FA CHIEF SURVIVE FIASCO?
Glenn has failed to protect football and women who play it
MARTIN GLENN may well be remembered as the FA chief executive who was way too hasty in sacking one England manager and disgracefully slow in dismissing another.
‘I’m not a football expert,’ Glenn admitted after Roy Hodgson’s resignation in France last year and never did that appear more apparent than last night.
With power at the FA comes enormous responsibility and the process by which Glenn appears to manage the most senior, highprofile members of his football staff has been revealed to be highly questionable.
Sam Allardyce was gone after the publication of one newspaper report and, while at the time it did appear hugely embarrassing for both the then England boss and his employers, the decision to act without reviewing all the evidence smacked of a lack of experience.
But that episode pales in comparison to the Mark Sampson fiasco and what looks like a massive failure to recognise both the need to protect the reputation of the governing body but also England’s international women. It amounts to negligence
How can Glenn remain at the helm when he was made aware that Sampson had been the subject of a safeguarding investigation two years ago?
How can he continue as chief executive when he has a duty of care to the players Sampson had been entrusted to coach?
Sampson was put in charge of the England senior team in December 2013 and it was only a matter of months before the allegations of inappropriate relationships with players surfaced from his previous role at the Bristol Academy. But the FA allowed him to remain in his job — even when it emerged that he had indeed crossed what were described yesterday as ‘ inappropriate boundaries’ and had to be sent on a special FA education course.
There was, we are told, evidence of unacceptable behaviour and Glenn admitted yesterday that he became aware of a safeguarding issue around Sampson in October 2015, some seven months after the chief executive joined the FA. But he accepted that Sampson ‘did not pose any threat from a safeguarding perspective’ and, inexplicably, says it did not occur to him to ask why he had been under investigation.
Yesterday Glenn conceded that he had made a mistake, even if he did attempt to defend himself by saying it would not have been standard procedure for him to enquire further about a potentially sensitive matter.
It was a weak excuse, and one that was further undermined by his insistence that the profile of Sampson’s position was an irrelevance. Of course it is relevant, and by last night senior figures at the FA were recognising the seriousness of the situation and the reasons why Sampson had to go. It was ‘an abuse of power’, ‘a misuse of trust’, ‘highly unprofessional’.
Even if Sampson has not broken any law, indeed any FA rule, it amounts to extremely inappropriate conduct for a football coach and leads to further questions for Glenn and the Wembley hierarchy.
For instance, was Glenn’s curiosity tempered in October 2015 by the fact that Sampson had just guided England’s women to a World Cup semi-final for the first time?
And exactly who knew what, prior to Glenn’s appointment as chief executive? How much did Dan Ashworth know in his role as coaching and development chief?
What did Sir Trevor Brooking know as the man who oversaw Sampson’s appointment?
And to what extent were Greg Dyke, the then chairman, and Alex Horne, who was the general secretary of the FA until October 2014, aware of the details?
The fact nevertheless remains that Glenn was in a position to sack Sampson two years ago and did nothing and, against the backdrop of the allegations levelled against the 34- year- old more recently, that surely makes his position untenable.
The claims made by Eni Aluko and first revealed on these pages remain unproven but if the FA’s handling of that controversy was already disastrous, this fresh evidence succeeds only in highlighting the governing body’s incompetence. Why did they pay Aluko £80,000 to keep quiet? Was it because they were concerned about where it might lead?
Glenn says only last week, when they were urged from outside the FA to revisit and actually read the safeguarding report on Sampson, did he and chairman Greg Clarke realise what had occurred in Bristol. And it was only then that they called the FA board to an emergency meeting and concluded that he had to go. It didn’t stop them letting Sampson remain as coach for Tuesday night’s 6-0 defeat of Russia, mind. No, they let him celebrate with his players in Tranmere and then called an impromptu press conference at Wembley yesterday, at such short notice many senior journalists were unable to get there.
That, in itself, looked like an underhand tactic — a desperate attempt to at least try to bury bad news. Nice try but there is no hiding from this. It is a scandal, and one that is sure to lead to further casualties.