“Elderly white men block reform” say former FA Chiefs
Former FA Chief executive Greg Dyke stepped down yesterday
English football has been shocked by the open letter released by 5 former FA chief executives today. David Bernstein, David Davies, Greg Dyke, Alex Horne and David Triesman have all said that the FA has failed to reform itself and English football in a way that is beneficial to the national team.
This comes only weeks after England’s dismal Euro 2016 campaign, where they were beaten 2-1 by minnows Iceland in an appalling performance. MPs have called for the FA to be reformed by the government in order to become more efficient in its governing role of English football. Indeed, Greg Dyke has said that working at the FA was “like going back to 1952”.
However, some pundits have argued that it really shouldn’t come as a shock to most people. Gary Neville said that “it shouldn’t surprise anybody really; the state of the game in our country is not healthy. You look at the top teams in the Premier League, the best league in the world, and only 30-odd % of them are English. You can see that the national team had an awful summer, but this has been coming for years; the 2010 World Cup, and the 2014 World Cup were both poor campaigns and we should be looking for more from a group of players earning over £50,000 a week.”
One of Parliament’s proposed pieces of legislation is going to be that more managers need to be English, and talks have reportedly already been held with Premier League boss Richard Scudamore and the EFL. A decision should be made in the coming days over what exactly will happen, but there are reports that suggest some clubs could be forced to axe their managers.
Foreign managers like Chelsea’s Antonio Conte may be forced to leave their clubs
