The FA has proved why football needs the government's help
Football cannot wait for David Bernstein, or the FA itself, to address its fundamental problems
David Bernstein said he could not produce "a wide range of answers" until he has tried to introduce two independent directors on to the FA board. Photograph: Michael Regan/Action Images Watching David Bernstein, the newly appointed chairman of the Football Association, and Alex Horne, the recently appointed "general secretary,"
give evidence to the parliamentary inquiry into football, demonstrated why the government should step in to help the game.
Bernstein, capable and decent, said repeatedly he has not been at
the FA long enough even to have a view, let alone do anything, on just about any issue the select committee has been set up to consider.
Horne - who replaced Ian Watmore, the FA's chief executive, last May, when the position was retitled "general secretary" - looked as if he was chewing over his answers first, to check they would not taste off to any FA "stakeholder," principally the Premier League, whose power at the FA, according to Watmore's previous evidence, made the job untenable.
Leeds United's ownership, which is definitely exercising the MPs, came up again; the proud Yorkshire club whose shares,
as chronicled by the Guardian, are held by three trusts in offshore tax havens, administered by trustees in Switzerland. Horne claimed that a select few Football League and FA executives know who the owners are behind these trusts, but the football public and Leeds fans do not – the Leeds chief executive, Shaun Harvey, has told the committee he does not, either.
Horne and Bernstein both agreed that is unsatisfactory, and should change, yet when asked how he planned to do so, to enable supporters to see who owns their clubs, Bernstein replied that it was too soon for him to say.
"It would be premature," he said, "for me to come up with a wide range of answers."
Bernstein, appointed just two months ago after the two-year battering endured by his predecessor, Lord Triesman, explained he must take each step as it comes. His first priority is to get two non-executive directors on the FA board, and he will not propose any major moves for the FA until that is achieved.
That responsible-seeming admission itself explains why the House of Commons culture, media and sport select committee inquiry is so timely, and why, when it reports, the government should step in, act, and speed up football's reform.
The two non-executive directors were recommended by Lord Burns in his review of the FA in 2005 – approaching six years ago. Bernstein is the third FA chairman since, and Horne the third chief executive – although the first to be called general-secretary - yet the independent directors have never been approved, blocked by a series of objections agonisingly explained by Roger Burden, head of the grass roots game, who gave evidence afterwards.
Bernstein itemised the procedure to get this done now: he had to present the proposal to the FA board in February, then again this month. Having been approved by the board, he took it to the 114-member council, last week, "for discussion." He must now go on a "road tour" to speak to these individual council members, almost all pensioner-age men, in their county FAs all over the country, to seek their approval. He will then try to have the reform passed by the FA council at its annual meeting in May, and after that by the shareholders, and it will still not be certain to go through.
"An extensive process," smiled the chairman, who is used to orchestrating rather faster-moving action in his business life.
"I don't want to get too involved in other basic issues until we've got this through," he said
But the problem with Bernstein's and the FA's learning curve is that the game and its public should not have to wait. The issues of urgent concern – increasing supporter involvement in the game's decision-making, about which Bernstein and Horne had nothing progressive to say; the game's lopsided and often screwed finances, transparency of club ownership - have been discussed, investigated, exposed, highlighted, campaigned on for years. Books have been written, previous parliamentary inquiries held - the Football Task Force, under the previous government, began sitting 14 years ago, going over much of the same ground. Supporters are already hugely involved at clubs, that debate has long passed: Supporters Direct was established 11 years ago, fans have formed trusts at most clubs, Exeter City is fully owned by its fans, Swansea City, flourishing in the Championship, is 20% owned by its supporters trust which elects a director. They are now waiting to see how this role can be embedded in an age of billionaire owners, as promised by the coalition government, not fobbed off with the customary condescension, which Bernstein came perilously close to, that fans will struggle to cope with the responsibilities.
Bernstein said he wants the FA to reclaim its credibility and play a "more supervisory role" over the Premier League, the elephants in the Wembley room throughout the hearing. Asked how he planned to claim such heights, an FA regulatory role which has been comprehensively rejected by the Premier League for years, Bernstein and Horne pointed to a "first meeting" they have called with the leagues.
The committee is known to be considering recommending a licensing system, under which clubs would have to meet certain criteria, including financial responsibility, transparency of ownership and involving supporters in decision-making. The FA, for all its beatings over the years, remains football's governing body so ought to oversee such a system.
The performances of the new chairman and newish general secretary, necessarily halting and unconvincing, demonstrated in themselves why the committee should get on with it, write its report and make its recommendations. After that the government, principally the sports minister, Hugh Robertson, and culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, can decide whether they have the nerve to put up, about helping football to better run itself, as the Labour government was always too timid to do, and pass some laws, sensible and progressive, to which football must sign up.
Government action, via a football or more general sports law, would help Bernstein, who is a businessman, a doer, not a politician. With a constructive role framed for the FA and its chairman – with perhaps, one day, two independent directors on its board – the governing body will have work to actually get on and do.
Diplomat as he is, Bernstein's face rather betrayed a sense that his forthcoming roadshow, to seek FA councillors' approval for independent directors which were recommended almost six years ago, does not promise to be the very best use of his time.
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