Fans deserve better
Sam Allardyce, the shortest-lived England manager in football history, offered a heartfelt apology when he stepped down from the job on Tuesday. But did he really mean it? Mr Allardyce does not consider he did anything fundamentally wrong. He admits to an “error of judgment” but maintains he was “entrapped” by a sting operation carried out by this newspaper. Others have talked of a “fishing expedition” to find material to discredit the ex-manager and the sport.
This is simply not the case. The investigation that led to Mr Allardyce’s downfall began nearly a year ago, following information received from people in the game concerned about the greed, corruption and venality at its heart. Since such activities do not display themselves openly, a certain amount of subterfuge was necessary to test the allegations. No one ever approached Mr Allardyce directly. It was an agent who suggested that representatives of a fictitious Far Eastern syndicate keen to invest in players might like to meet the England manager.
Moreover, there was not just one meeting but two, the second longer than the first. If Mr Allardyce felt uncomfortable with the tenor of the conversation, he could have walked away. No one made him say what he said about circumventing FA rules on player ownership; no one forced him to agree in principle to a £400,000 deal to help advise the fictitious company.
So, this is not a story of entrapment but of discreditable personal behaviour. Most people will be astonished that someone paid £3 million a year to manage the national team – itself an extraordinary amount for a part-time job – should even consider it necessary to seek additional employment to enrich himself further. Mr Allardyce said he was disappointed to lose the job he had long coveted; but the real disappointment is that felt by English football fans who expected and deserved higher standards from the man representing the national side.
Mr Allardyce doubtless feels aggrieved that he has ended up as the fall guy for the deeper crisis in the sport exposed by this newspaper, with further revelations today about payments made to managers. This is not something that football can brush under the carpet as an unfortunate distraction; it is a systemic issue linked to the vast amounts of money sloshing around a sport that the FA seems singularly ill-equipped to regulate. There are laws against bribery and corruption that the legal authorities must use if evidence exists. But within football, sweeping organisational and structural changes are required if the FA is to be an effective regulator. This time, another inquiry leading nowhere will not be good enough.