FA’s departing chief executive will leave through the revolving door in May but with the ruling body in a stronger positionOn top of the congratulatory statistics with which the Football Association showered Martin Glenn when announcing he will stand down as the chief executive at the end of this season, is another, the most pertinent figure of all. Glenn’s decision, made just before Richard Scudamore takes his leave of the Premier League with his famous £5m thank-you card, means no fewer than six FA chief executives have gone or announced their departures during Scudamore’s single 19-year span.Glenn was 55 in 2015 when offered the dream/nightmare job in Wembley’s corridors, and is said to have told the then FA chairman, Greg...
The executive chairman’s departure sits awkwardly next to fudged pledges to help football’s grassrootsIt was strangely appropriate that London was in political chaos over the UK’s impending exit from the European Union when the Premier League clubs gathered unruffled at their meeting and awarded their executive chairman, Richard Scudamore, an eye-popping £5m for choosing to leave his job. There they were, modern representatives of football clubs formed as social enterprises in Victorian England, by churches, schools and enlightened employers, presenting an image of being in a kind of money bubble, voting to give grossly excessive thanks to the man who has enriched them over 19 years. Related: Richard Scudamore will accept £5m departure bonus from Premier League Related: Plan for...
Giving Richard Scudamore, the outgoing Premier League executive chairman, £5m sends out a terrible message to supporters struggling to meet the cost of their season ticketsHere is a handy memo to future historians of the national sport in this country. Note the date of 13 November 2018, because with the announcement of plans for Richard Scudamore’s parting gift of £5m – £250,000 to be volunteered by each Premier League club – it marks the formal end of football’s 140-year life as the people’s game.Not that anyone will necessarily notice the difference. The whole point about modern football, a case in point being Manchester City’s alleged infractions of the Financial Fair Play rules, is that so much money is now involved,...