The FA has been plunged into crisis as it lost its sixth chief executive in eleven years with the resignation of Ian Watmore after only nine months in the post. Failure to make progress on disciplinary issues was one of his concerns and there were also tensions with the chairman of the Premier Leahue. The straw that broke the camel’s back appears to have been the leak at the weekend of an E-mail to a national newspaper.
The FA has been plunged into crisis as it lost its sixth chief executive in eleven years with the resignation of Ian Watmore after only nine months in the post. Failure to make progress on disciplinary issues was one of his concerns and there were also tensions with the chairman of the Premier Leahue. The straw that broke the camel’s back appears to have been the leak at the weekend of an E-mail to a national newspaper.
However, there are more fundamental underlying problems. The FA has to carry out a range of tasks from nurturing grass roots football to running the national team. It does so through a complex committee structure that works on the basis of consenus. It many ways it looks like an old fashioned local council. Such a structure may be good for democracy, or at least for the egos of the ‘blazer brigade’ that haunt football at the lower levels, but it is not a good recipe for getting things done.
Watmore joined the FA on a modernisation agenda. It has been under pressure from government to get its act together and justify football’s largely self-regulatory framework. Many fans have been disappointed with the FA over a range of issues, considering that their concerns come at the back of the queue most of the time.