Sports minister Gerry Sutcliffe has demanded that the Football Association speed up its plans to modernise. At one point he appeared to suggest that the £25m in funding that the FA receives from the government was at stake, but officials at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport subsequently downplayed that suggestion. Mr Sutcliffe is irritated at the delay in the appointment of two independent non-executive directors to the board of the FA.
Sports minister Gerry Sutcliffe has demanded that the Football Association speed up its plans to modernise. At one point he appeared to suggest that the £25m in funding that the FA receives from the government was at stake, but officials at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport subsequently downplayed that suggestion. Mr Sutcliffe is irritated at the delay in the appointment of two independent non-executive directors to the board of the FA. The appointments were among recommendations in Lord Burns’s 2005 review of the FA structure, aimed at improving the accountability of a body often criticised for its outdated views and ageing, male-dominated hierarchy. Although the review led to the appointment of Lord Triesman as the FA’s independent chairman in 2007, the FA is still working out how to complete the recommended changes in its board’s membership.
Mr Sutcliffe told the FA he was disappointed at its response to seven questions posed to the FA, the Premier League and the Football League by the government last year about the future of the game, including the state of club finances, financial regulation and the imbalance between the handful of successful clubs and the rest. Mr Sutcliffe’s letter welcomed some of the measures taken by the two leagues to improve financial scrutiny of clubs and to require clubs to clear their debts to each other, as well as moves to increase the number of home grown players. But he told the authorities they had fallen short in their responses to government concerns about the amount of debt held by clubs, the clubs’ competitive imbalance and youth development. The minister is also concerned about the stagnant women’s game and the lack of movement on the National Football Centre in Burton.
Sutcliffe warned that football’s piecemeal approach needed to be scrapped with one regulatory body set up to scrutinise all club takeovers and to administer the fit and proper person test. Sutcliffe believes that an independent regulator, employed to check on potential buyers before they purchase a club, might be the answer. But who would pay for the regulator and to whom would s/he be answerable?
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