FA's day of reckoning at Westminster drags organisation's reputation further through
Channel: I Can
Date: 2017-10-19

you can say Mark Sampson used racially discriminatory language. You can say he made racially-charged comments to Eni Aluko about her family bringing Ebola with them to Wembley, or to Drew Spence about whether she had ever been arrested. You can say he was in contravention of the Equality Act, and that he should go on racial awareness training. But according to barrister Katharine Newton’s latest report into the Football Association’s serial incompetence, you can’t call him a racist. Because that would be unfair, you see.

A similar style of semantic ballet was visible in Parliament on Wednesday, as four high-ranking members of the FA were interrogated by a committee of MPs on l’affaire Aluko, l’affaire Sampson and much else besides. Simply put, a lot of things had gone wrong, yet conveniently most of those things were a long way in the past. And yes, they were all very sorry, but curiously not for things they had actually done. And yes, people had to be made accountable, but conveniently none of those people were actually in the room at the time.
Meanwhile Dan Ashworth, the FA’s technical director, said very little of anything at all. Ashworth is probably best known for being the architect of the fabled “England DNA”, which urges English footballers to be bold, proactive, fluent and dictate terms. By contrast, you could argue that his contribution to the committee today - curt, stifled, almost heartbreaking in its lack of verve - was a far better analogue for the current side than anything the St George's Park marketing department could rustle up.