EMBARRASSING
I’d give the £5m to those who did the job, ex-FA chief tells Scudamore
‘HE HAS DONE A LOT FOR THE PREMIER LEAGUE BUT EARNED A LOT, TOO’ ‘WHY WOULD WE WANT TO GET RID OF WEMBLEY? IT’S A ASSET EARNING £40M’
AS retiring Premier League executive chairman Richard Scudamore looks forward to his controversial £5million pay-off from the country’s 20 top-flight clubs, Dave Richards, the man who appointed him in 1999, leans forward to reveal the true inflation rate it signifies.
‘We had to pay a transfer fee to the Football League for Richard. I think it was £85,000,’ says Richards, acting as the Premier League’s chairman at the time.
‘Spencer Stuart [the headhunters] gave us eight candidates and we narrowed it down to two, Richard and Chris Croker, whose father, Ted, had worked at the FA.
‘It was neck and neck between them and we couldn’t decide, so we sent them to Churchill College for psychometric testing.
‘Richard came out clearly on top and I invited him to my house in Sheffield and told him in the lounge he’d got the job.’
Richards has been football’s ultimate insider for the past 30 years, holding senior positions at both the Premier League and FA, and helping to rule on a huge range of issues from building Wembley to appointing England managers.
To mark his 75th birthday last month, he has agreed to a rare interview and perhaps feels freer to speak his mind than when he was going up the ladder.
He worked alongside Scudamore for 14 years until the Premier League’s age rules forced him to stand down at 70.
The subject of Scudamore’s golden handshake is not personal but he clearly feels it is not in the best taste or the game’s interest.
‘Scud has done an awful lot for the Premier League, but he has earned a lot, too. Good luck to the lad if the 20 clubs want to chip in £250,000 each but I think he should be embarrassed taking it.
‘He had some great people around him. Phil Lines [head of media rights], Paul Molnar [director of broadcasting] who did all the television work. Richard Masters, Bill Bush, Roz Donnelly.
‘If somebody gave me £5million, I’d hand it to the staff, the people who did the job. But Richard was the figurehead and figureheads get paid, don’t they.’
Richards’ message is delivered in plain Yorkshire befitting a man who made a business success from Sheffield steel engineering.
When he emerged as Sheffield Wednesday chairman at the start of the Premier League era, there was no place for shrinking violets. Among his contemporaries were Ken Bates, ‘Deadly’ Doug Ellis, Sam Hammam, Ron Noades, Irving Scholar and Martin Edwards.
‘Very strong people,’ he says. ‘Sam used to go into our away dressing room at Hillsborough and scrawl “Wimbledon are scum” on the walls to fire up his players who thought we’d done it. Ken was gobby and knew how to build football stadiums. He was the mover and shaker behind Wembley and looked at every detail; proper seats, proper walkways, proper toilets.
‘The Government went for him when it was almost finished and I had to tell him to step down. A terrible day. There should be a plaque outside Wembley for Ken. Building it was largely down to him.’
As Richards sits around the boardroom table of the family graphic design company in Sheffield, it is clear the passion still burns bright.
Age rules mean he can no longer hold formal power at the FA but he is allowed to attend council meetings and give speeches.
He was influential in blocking the proposed sale of Wembley to Fulham owner Shahid Khan.
It is a subject close to his heart as was his proposal in the Nineties — supported by Tony Blair — that the FA should own their stadium and stop paying large hire costs for England games.
The original idea was to refurbish the old stadium but the level of decay in the concrete led to the rebuild.
‘I did speak out in council about the sale [to Khan]. Wembley national stadium is a phenomenal asset for us’ says Richards.
‘A few years ago we were offered £1billion from a massive London property developer but we didn’t want to sell. Everything is right about the stadium and at the moment it is making £40m a year.
‘People talk about £600m going into grassroots by selling it as if it’d be delivered in one magical lump sum. And even if that happened, how long would the money last, 10 years? This stadium is built to last for 150 years for the FA. It does concerts, rugby, it’s a great venue for visitors from around the world. Why would we want to get rid?’
Richards is aware of his reputation as the ultimate blazer. Critics will point to the financial problems faced by Wednesday after his departure or the ill-advised comments about FIFA ‘stealing the game’ from England for which he apologised. But having had a major foot in both the FA and Premier League camps, his views on football’s basic conflicts of interest are worth listening to.
‘You are always striving to find the balance between the governance, regulation and discipline of the game, and the commercial aspect,’ he says. ‘You can’t make everyone happy.
‘I saw it from both sides. On the one hand you are trying to develop a business called the Premier League. On the other, the FA are trying to regulate and stay financially strong with TV rights, lease of players, games abroad. It is always a balancing act.’
For someone told by his father to avoid football — ‘he said it was the quickest way to part with your money’ — Richards can reflect on being at the epicentre of so many big stories. He led the FA international committee that picked England managers, leaning on his neighbour Howard Wilkinson for advice. ‘Steve McClaren was seen as a safe pair of hands after Sven [Goran Eriksson] left in 2006, nobody thought it would work out the way it did,’ he says.
‘Fabio [Capello] was a great bloke but didn’t suffer fools. Whereas Sven had a very nice nature and wanted everything to be friendly. Fabio didn’t care.’
Last week amid the Scudamore furore, Susanna Dinnage from US television network Discovery was named as his successor.
Richards has some helpful advice. ‘She needs a strong chairman who knows football. Someone who can deal with the 20 Premier League chairmen and take those phone calls from managers on a Sunday morning having a go at their referee.
‘Someone who stands out a mile is David Gill [former Manchester United chief executive]. If I was at the Premier League and had to appoint a chairman, he would be offered the job tomorrow.’