On 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 Dyke, that he would not consider a 10-year stint. Dyke is said to have reassured him that the average survival expectancy was around two years. Scudamore, patrolling his territory, had a little to do with that; run-ins over the FA’s power as the governing body to rein in the Premier League’s commercialised domination contributed to the abrupt exits of the very able Adam Crozier and Ian Watmore.
Related: Martin Glenn resigns as FA chief executive after challenge-packed tenure
Continue reading...