All we ask is that football protects everyone in its care
Today’s select committee meeting will fan the flames of the Sampson affair, but lessons are already clear
Countless conversations with people in football at all levels have persuaded me that the game still attracts more than its fair share of throwbacks: unreconstructed people, who communicate in put-downs, insults and tired comedy from the 1950s.
Oblivious to the upset they cause, particularly to the young, and minorities, these kings of knockabout claim a special exception because “this is football”, and “people ought to be able to take it” as “no harm was meant”. Well, I happen to know of young footballers who have come reeling out of academies with mental-health problems they ascribe in part to experiences at the hands of coaches and other club officials. The bully likes to tell you where the line between insults and “banter” should be drawn. The victim is usually better placed to make that call.
The tricky part is when the “-isms” start flying around. These shorthand terms get to the point, sometimes too quickly, with racism and sexism the most obvious one. And both come with a kind of duty of care. To use them too freely cheapens the most serious cases by equating those with much lesser offences. The discussion is shut down, not given urgency, by labelling that precedes evaluation of the facts.
Thus, football lumbers to a potentially explosive meeting of the digital, culture, media and sport select committee today, at which MPS are expected to be shown the results of the Football Association’s latest (and final) investigation into claims made by Eni Aluko about Mark Sampson in his time as the England Women team manager. After Aluko has been interviewed, most of the FA’S most senior mandarins – Greg Clarke, Martin Glenn, Dan Ashworth and Rachel Brace – will face questions about the FA’S handling of the case, and Sampson’s sacking over a separate issue: his “inappropriate” Guardian The