Former Premier League chief blames councils for grass-roots crisis

SPORTS NEWS CORRESPONDENT

Sir Dave Richards, the former Premier League chairman who helped derail the £600 million Wembley sale, has blamed local authorities for the crisis in grass-roots facilities.

Richards, a vocal opponent when the Football Association Council gathered at a crunch meeting to decide Wembley’s fate this month, said the offer from Shahid Khan would have been wasted.

“It is councils that are failing, not football,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live. “Do we want to invest in council grounds that in five years’ time are going to want us to do it again?”

He went on to describe a widening rift between the council and the FA board, prompting an angry response from former FA chairman Greg Dyke, who accused the wider organisation of living in the past.

The rumbling row between senior FA figures comes amid widespread support for The Telegraph “Save Our Game” campaign to address the crisis in amateur facilities.

Dyke, who quit in 2016 after clashing with the FA Council over reforms of the governing body, said: “When Dave Richards said there is a chasm between the board and the council, it is because the council is living in the past, as it always has done.”

On the loss of investment to the grass-roots game, Richards said: “You need to look at grass-roots football and what the Football Foundation has done over the last number of years, and realise they are already putting £65 million a year into grass roots, and the grass roots which are failing now belong to councils.”

Richards told Sportsweek he was pleased the Wembley deal had not gone through “because it belongs to the nation, it is like selling the BBC and Buckingham Palace”.

Asked whether he thought it meant the sale was now off permanently, Richards said: “You can never say that, not with the board of directors, chairman and chief executive we have got, it could come up next week.”

Dyke also disagreed with Richards’s opinions on investment, adding: “Local authorities cannot afford to maintain them – £600million is an awful lot of money. If you want to have a step-change in grass-roots facilities, you need the amount of money to be spent. Would the FA spend it wisely? I think, yes.”

He said it “is bizarre that it is the old men of the FA Council who have stopped it”, adding: “If I had been chairman, I would have said it is the board’s job – not the FA Council’s job – to deal with it. The council, I don’t think is equipped to make this sort of decision.”