Excellent Euros is no accident, but rather the realisation of FA’s steady progress, planning and sound foundationsThe Football Association, a national fixture since 1863, sustains energetic batterings when mired in its periodic crises, so it is only right that credit should be given at a time such as now, when its good work is luminously coming to fruition.The success of Gareth Southgate’s England team, and of the manager himself, in reaching Sunday’s European Championship final is not a miraculous accident, but the realisation of steady progress, planning and the building of sound foundations. The England team are somehow viewed separately from perceptions of the FA, but the governing body runs the whole setup and this pinnacle has been reached after...
Super League shambles shows the focus must not be on short-term gain even as search for sustainability goes onThe European Super League saga may, for now, be over but fallout from the shambolic breakaway attempt rumbles on.“As soon as practicable after the start of the men’s competition, a corresponding women’s league will also be launched, helping to advance and develop the women’s game,” the ESL launch statement proclaimed. Related: ‘It’s been a pleasure and privilege’: Fara Williams to retire at end of the season Europe's most successful women's football team, Lyon, have hired a female coach for the first time with former academy director Sonia Bompastor replacing Jean-Luc Vasseur. Continue reading...
The FA, Premier League and PFA all have senior appointments pending and this time should take diversity seriouslyGreg Clarke is gone but football’s deep-rooted issues remain. The leadership of football – across all the authorities – is not fit for purpose.Following the former Football Association chairman’s confused performance at the select committee this week – that offended women, the black, Asian and LGBT+ communities – the focus has rightly returned to the significant challenge of how we identify credible and relevant leaders to drive the sport forward. Related: Chief executive admits FA has 'more to do' on equality and diversity Continue reading...
FA chairman posed as the good English football man standing up to billionaires but that was not Project Big Picture’s realityWhen the Football Association chairman, Greg Clarke, manoeuvred into the space left by Richard Scudamore’s departure from the Premier League and started Project Big Picture, he told his small group of invited participants they needed the “moral authority” to secure changes to the game. Sadly the plans Clarke developed – and the misleading accounts he has given after they were leaked and exposed to the light – have stripped any moral authority he and the FA had to reshape football in these critical times. Clarke was trying, when he initiated the talks in January, to restore the FA as football’s...
The plan put forward by Liverpool and Manchester United seeks to empower the biggest clubs at the expense of the Premier League itself and they will not remain quietThink back, if you can, to how football looked a week ago. Try to remember that prelapsarian age, when the only concerns were a rampant pandemic, a financial calamity threatening the future of the game and a continuing reckoning with the stark absence of racial equality within the sport. Peaceful, wasn’t it?Well, that was before the 17th (or was it 18th?) draft of Project Big Picture was made public. A plan advocating the complete restructuring of English football as we know it, it provoked between figures at the top of the sport...