FA IN MELTDOWN
‘Shambolic’ chiefs routed by MPs over Aluko affair
‘SHAMBOLIC’ Football Association chiefs faced demands to resign last night after being forced into a humiliating apology over racist comments by the former England women’s boss Mark Sampson.
On an extraordinary day when the FA’s credibility was shot to pieces at a parliamentary hearing in Westminster, the Chelsea and England striker Eniola Aluko made a series of stunning revelations.
She accused the FA of ‘appalling’ behaviour ‘bordering on blackmail’.
She claimed FA chief executive Martin Glenn told her the release of a £40,000 settlement was dependent on her writing a favourable statement clearing the FA of institutional racism. He denied asking her to do this.
She alleged that a black actress was hired for a role–play exercise in a bid to show other England team-mates how selfish and difficult players could disrupt the squad.
She claimed England goalkeeping coach Lee Kendall had spoken to her in a Caribbean accent.
MP Damian Collins said the credibility of Glenn and FA chairman Greg Clarke was in question after two hours of evidence in which the pair failed four times to admit they had
THE FA came out swinging and by the end of another extraordinary chapter in the chequered history of this blighted organisation, all you were left wondering was where on earth was the humility, the contrition, the slightest sense of self-awareness.
They were led by Greg Clarke, a square-jawed chairman who likes to take the punches and whose bombast was extraordinary, in the light of a top barrister’s conclusion that whistleblower Eni Aluko had been subjected to racist humour by former England manager Mark Sampson.
Clarke complained of being made to look ‘oafish’ over his handling of Aluko’s complaints that she had been ignored. Yes, that term pretty much defined it.
The irony of this dismal saga is that there actually is a case for the FA’s defence. They had initiated the culture review, which elicited Aluko’s complaints, in the first place. They called in barrister Katharine Newton to test an internal inquiry into the racism claims. She said that transparency would have been served better by Aluko complying from the start in the independent inquiry. ‘I find [her] explanation for failing to provide potentially crucial evidence unsatisfactory,’ Newton said, detailing evidence that the forward might have provided from the start.
But those kind of details evaporate when the swagger of executives like Clarke and his chief executive, Martin Glenn, are providing such a deeply unattractive picture of the organisation.
There have been clues to their carelessness and high-mindedness all along. Newton revealed in her initial report, made public last month, that she had told the FA they ought to get back to Aluko, telling her what had been established about her initial complaint.
‘I was instructed by the FA to provide you with such a reply in the form of a letter,’ she wrote to Aluko. So a letter it was, with instructions to contact the HR director if she wanted anything more. What would it have taken to have invited Aluko to Wembley and explained the outcome to her? There was more of the high-mindedness yesterday in a two-hour cross- examination of Clarke, Glenn, HR director Rachel Brace and technical director Dan Ashworth which was mostly excruciating, occasionally laughable — and grim, when Clarke employed last year’s historic abuse crisis as a factor in his defence.
He had sent back a disrespectful email — ‘Why are you sending me this?’ — when pursued by the Professional Footballers’ Association about the Aluko case, and one of two contradictory excuses for this offered to MPs was the volume of work caused by the revelations of abuse. ‘You might remember it was the biggest crisis in the FA’s history,’ Clarke said.
He claimed in the same breath that sports governance rules had prevented him helping the PFA, who had pursued him at three football matches.
More startling than the contradiction was that the FA had not even discussed how they should explain the email in advance.
Ashworth had most to answer for, having been censured by Newton for deliberately attempting to influence an internal Aluko inquiry by playing judge and jury and, we now know, providing a list of 16 people for Newton to question — none of whom had been witness to the main allegation of racial discrimination. He sat at the end of the line of executives, ashen faced, waiting for his own public evisceration. Clarke spoke so much the technical director hardly got a word in.
Clarke provided the most desperate lack of understanding of diversity and management. He was into the last lap when describing the notion of ‘ institutional racism’ as fluff. The end was even closer when Labour MP Chris Matheson broached the issue of Lucy Ward, a former Leeds United welfare officer who was submitted to unremitting sexual discrimination by club owner Massimo Cellino and Adam Pearson, the henchman he enlisted to fire her.
Determined to bring Cellino’s conduct out into the open, Ward refused to settle out of court. Since winning an industrial tribunal 18 months back she has been trying to make the FA look at her case and it has not wanted to know.
‘When did this happen?’ Clarke said, when Matheson mentioned her case.
He finally shook hands with Aluko as he left the courtroom but the damage was unmistakable. Why on earth should anyone listen to the FA now? It is time to let the executives go and start again.