Sampson crisis top of agenda for FA meeting

THE Mark Sampson scandal, which has become a full-blown crisis for the Football Association, will be discussed at a board meeting on Monday. The scheduled summit has been in the FA calendar for some time, but it could just as easily have been convened as an emergency with the FA braced for more damaging disclosures about the axed England women’s coach. FA chief executive Martin Glenn is in the eye of the storm, having admitted he was not curious enough in October 2015 to read Sampson’s full safeguarding report. The detail it contained about Sampson’s inappropriate conduct with his players at Bristol Academy led to him being axed by the FA this week after Glenn finally read it, two years later than when he first had the opportunity. An internal FA investigation is also ongoing as to why their recruitment and safeguarding process could result in such a serious own goal — allowing a wholly unsuitable England women’s manager to continue in his role for so long. The FA meeting will have the

Sampson affair high on the agenda. Nevertheless, Glenn retains the board’s support. The other member of the FA hierarchy feeling the pressure is technical director Dan Ashworth. He was at the meeting in November 2014 when the top brass were alerted to a safeguarding investigation into Sampson’s time at Bristol. Yet Ashworth awarded Sampson (right) a new contract in January 2016 without delving further into the coach’s past apart from knowing the FA safeguarding department had cleared him to continue in football as not being a material risk. Meanwhile, Chelsea player Drew Spence, who is mixed race and alleged to have been asked by Sampson at the 2015 China Cup how many times she had been arrested, yesterday met Katharine Newton, who is leading the investigation into the allegations of bullying, harassment and racism against Sampson.