FOOTBALL NEEDS A NEW WAY FORWARD
THE CAMPAIGN for improved governance of football in England gathered pace this week after MP Helen Grant introduced a Bill in Parliament to establish an independent regulator.
The former Conservative sports minister is part of the Saving Our Beautiful Game group, which includes ex-FA chairman David Bernstein, former England and Manchester United defender Gary Neville and ex-FA executive director David Davis, in demanding change to how the game is run.
Grant, who represents Maidstone and the Weald at Westminster and spent nearly three years in David Cameron’s Government, introduced her Football (Regulation) Bill on Tuesday under the Ten Minute Rule Bill procedure after securing cross-party support.
“The governance of English football is broken,” she said. “Our national game, the beautiful game, is in crisis. These issues are not new but have been laid bare and amplified by the Covid-19 pandemic during which sadly football has failed to speak with one voice.
“We have seen much-loved clubs go to the wall, sadly many more may well follow and at the heart of this is broken governance and gross financial disparities between the rich clubs and the poor clubs and unsustainable business models.”
Grant ripped into The FA, describing football’s governing body as ‘outdated and out-of-touch’, said how the Premier League were ‘marking their own homework’ in setting up its own governance review and criticised the slow progress on addressing the link between dementia and heading footballs.
Then she took aim at the National League funding saga over the distribution of the £10m Government grant during October to December.
“Locally, too, working alongside Maidstone United in my constituency, I have witnessed the flawed distribution of emergency National Lottery funding to National League clubs,” she said. “This botch, failing to account for lost gate receipts, has left many clubs in dire financial circumstances. These examples very sadly illustrate the fact that in England, no one is speaking for the football world with the independence and authority needed to address the big issues.”
Grant explained how in France, Spain and Germany lawmakers have all had an impact on the way the game is run in their countries.
The independent regulator would have the power and responsibility to:
Distribute funds in the interest of the wider game
Introduce a comprehensive licensing system for professional clubs
Review thoroughly the causes of financial stress
Bring forward reforms to modernise and strengthen The FA
Work with supporter groups to advance causes that really matter to them
Drive the promotion of diversity and inclusion in football
“A regulator, appointed by this Bill, would be absolutely independent, funded from within football, not by public money, and would not require government to run the game,” added Grant. “Our football governance needs emergency surgery and it needs that surgery now.”