England manager to be paid for results
FA chief Glenn criticises huge salaries of the past
Full-time psychiatrist may be hired to help players
Martin Glenn, the chief executive of the Football Association, has accused previous regimes at the organisation of being “just naive” in paying inflated salaries for England managers such as Sven-Goran Eriksson and Fabio Capello, and he promised that Roy Hodgson’s successor would be offered a much more “results-orientated” contract.
The search has begun to find a new England manager after Hodgson quit following the shocking Euro 2016 exit against Iceland – with his contract up in any case after the FA delayed on a new deal – and Glenn said that although there is cash available to pay “what the world champions (Germany) are paying” he “doesn’t mean I want to be lax with the money”.
The salary of Germany head coach Joachim Löw is complicated in that it is tied in with sponsorship deals, with percentages based on results, and although Glenn did not disclose what the German was earning, it had been previously reported at just over £2 million-a-year as a base figure, but with significant incentives built in on top to bump it up.
Hodgson is said to have earned a base salary of £3.5 million. By referring to Germany, Glenn was giving a “benchmark” in terms of achievement.
“I can’t say what the right salary is really,” Glenn said. “You say Fabio’s got a fortune. Roy’s got a fortune, but it’s half the fortune that Fabio got.
“My view on these things is – take the emotion out of it. What is benchmark earnings for top-quality football management? I think you have to look at it in that way. So, to get a really good person and they are currently earning £4million in a club, you have to be in that zone. I think luckily we’ve got the FA finances [right] now.
“It has been ugly, but we have restructured, we’ve reorganised, we have ploughed a lot more money into elite teams and to pitches. We’re in a better financial position than we’ve ever been, which doesn’t mean I want to be lax with the money.”
Glenn suggested that the FA would no longer pay a huge base salary without incentives. “The argument against Sven and Fabio in the past was that it wasn’t benchmarked,” he said. “We were just naive. I think we will pay a benchmark salary for the right person. That’s the way to look at it. And I don’t quite know what it is yet.
“I know a little bit about what Joachim Löw gets. It’s a little bit confused by sponsorship rights, etc. We need to be in the zone of what the world champions are paying and competitively how to make it attractive to someone.”
Glenn will lead the search, with FA technical director Dan Ashworth and vice-chairman David Gill. The trio met on Friday and Ashworth will draw up a long list of potential candidates which they will consider, with Glenn emphasising that although he would prefer an English manager “there aren’t that many at the top level”.
There remains the likelihood that the FA will appoint a caretaker manager for the start of England’s World Cup qualifying campaign. During the press conference at England’s training base in Chantilly the day after Hodgson resigned, Glenn spoke of the “brittle” mentality of English players, and he expanded on this to suggest that the FA should employ a full-time sports psychologist to work with the players.
At present the psychiatrist Dr Steve Peters is used on a part-time basis, but Glenn said a full-time appointment needs to be considered.
“Absolutely,” he said. “I think there is an open question of ‘Could we use people like Steve or his organisation or others in a more structured way, in a way that we do with the development teams?’
“That to me is an open question and I would want the next England manager to be open to that type of idea. It’s three legs of the stool – and particularly given the scrutiny our players are under, it’s about the mental resilience.”
A fish rots from the head, and if you do not get the head right then the rest will not be right
Over 50 years, different managers, all of whom are credible when they arrive, come into this position, and their time ends in something approaching disaster.
Looking at the trend of performance, probably over the last 10 or 12 years, this is getting worse, not better. The last couple of World Cups and European Championships, we have done particularly badly.
When something happens over such a long period, we need to look at the underlying causes. And, at the end of the day, the Football Association is responsible for the running of the England team and for much wider issues as well.
It was said of the FA by a government parliamentary select committee and others that it is not fit for purpose. In my view, you have got pretty professional management there who are operating in an amateur structure. It is a structure that is not modern and is not independent.
We have got a succession now of chairmen from different backgrounds who, again, all come in with credibility – and chief executives as well – whose time finishes unsatisfactorily. That particularly applies to recent years because you have had three chairmen in a row who have all tried to introduce some modernisation and, by and large, have failed.
In my view, both in absolute terms and in attempting to balance the Premier League, with all its financial power, the FA is failing. And, as long as it continues to fail, and as long as it continues not to modernise, this situation will just continue.
You can take any manager you like but a fish rots from the head, and if you do not get the head right then the rest will not be right. It could not be much worse, not if you are talking about an international team. We had two World Cups, in South Africa and Brazil, which were absolutely awful.
This performance this time has been really, really, dreadful. All this is in spite of different generations of players. We had the ‘Golden Generation’, which turned out to be fool’s gold. And now we have got the young generation who are performing very well at their clubs. Whatever happens, whatever combination of players you get, it seems to make very, very little difference.
These are not coincidences that are going to be sorted by a little bit of tampering here and there. In my view, it needs fundamental change.
Some things are changing: we have got the National Football Centre and we have had more progressive coaching for young people and so on. But without a strong governing body that is really going to attempt to support its management and chairmen in trying to get serious change through, this will be to no avail.
And we will continue to see a very, very powerful Premier League achieve the success and the financial rewards that it wants but effectively at the expense of international football.
It is a bit like Jeremy Corbyn and the members of the Labour Party. Some people are extremely obstinate and will stick to what they see as their guns, and the FA Council is of that ilk.
I think the FA Council would rather lose some funding and lose this and lose that if they can preserve their privileges and the authority that they have got.
I have thought all along that the government needs to get very serious about this and think about appointing a regulator to get this sorted out. I cannot see any other way.