Chief Executive Appointment Does Not Solve FA Problems - 28/11/2004

Brian Barwick, the controller of ITV sport, has been appointed chief executive of the Football Association, but he inherits a difficult situation at football's governing body. Indeed, the post is such a poisoned chalice that there have been five occupants in the last six years. Barwick does not get off to a good start with four of the twelve directors opposing his appointment after a day that is said to have ended in raised voices. Three high profile chairmen from leading clubs (Bolton, Ipswich and Southampton) along with the Premier League's Dave Rochards are reported to have voted against with the six amateur representatives along with the Football League representative and Arsenal's David Dein carrying the day. Other leading candidates, including Trevor Birch, the former Chelsea and Leeds chief executive, had already dropped out of the running. They thought that there were simply too many problems to overcome. Morale in the FA headquarters at Soho Square has been low since the enforced resignation of the former chief executive, Mark Pallos, in the summer following the Faria Alam scandal. The problems of the FA are, however, fundamentally structural. The council, for example, still contains a representative from the Royal Air Force, but no one from the Professional Footballers' Association. The Times bluntly dismissed the FA as being made up of 'A council of old farts and a boardroom of vested interests.' The Government, after an initial burst of interest in football regulation after it was first elected, has confined its interventions to indirect pressure, which may well be the only possible course of action given the resistance to what is often portrayed as interference from outside the 'football community'. Barwick could be helped if the chairman, Geoff Thompson, could be persuaded to resign, even though he was elected unopposed for four years in the summer. The Times commented, 'He has been an ineffective leader and the bungled search for a new chief executive has caused many of the board to finally lose their patience.' Fans deserve better than the hapless mixture of amateurism and deference to the agendas of commercial interests, as revealed in the MK Dons franchising fiasco, that seems to have prevailed at Soho Square. As the Football Governance Research Centre has suggested, football suffers from the FA's power brokers being drawn from the opposite poles of the county FAs and the professional games. More use of independent non-executives would be a step forward.