Post by QPR Report on Oct 2, 2009 6:30:50 GMT
The Times
October 2, 2009
‘Clubs are just too important to be played about with by bad owners’
Ian Watmore, the new FA chief executive, has made a strong first impression in what was once considered an impossible job
Oliver Kay, Football Correspondent
The conversation had just turned to club ownership when Ian Watmore made the observation — second-hand, he was keen to stress — that sensible and successful people have a strange tendency to “leave their best judgment behind at the gates” when they enter the mind- altering world of football.
The same might be said of administrators, to judge from the experiences of some, though not quite all, of Watmore’s predecessors as chief executive of the FA. There was Graham Kelly, the football man who was forced to resign over an allegedly improper loan to the FA of Wales; there was Adam Crozier, the advertising executive who had barely begun his expensive facelift of the governing body when he decamped to Royal Mail; and there was Mark Palios, the insolvency practitioner who stood down over his handling of the unedifying scandal that arose from Sven- Göran Eriksson’s dalliance with a secretary.
When Brian Barwick, a former television executive, departed last year with his dignity intact but his authority damaged, it seemed that the position was entering the same “impossible job” territory as the England manager’s role pre-Fabio Capello. But Watmore, a punk-loving Arsenal fanatic who previously served as permanent secretary for the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, has, like Capello, managed to make himself at home very quickly, going some way, he hopes, to addressing the recent criticisms made of the organisation by Gerry Sutcliffe, the Sports Minister.
“One thing I have tried to do is go out and about around the game,” he said. “I’ve met most of my predecessors and the previous chairmen. I’ve tried to meet people from the professional clubs, right through to non-League clubs and the amateur game. I’ve met people who aren’t immediately obvious, but with each of them, there has been a purpose in seeking their viewpoint on football. If I disagree with it, fine, but at least I know why and I can piece it together.
"That perception about the FA [in relation to Sutcliffe’s comments about the time taken to implement the recommendations of the Burns report] has been around for ever. For as long as I’ve been watching football and taking an interest, people have made those kind of complaints. That seems to be the nature of the beast. What I think you have to do is get beneath that and say, ‘What are the real issues and are we dealing with them?’ ”
The real issues are numerous. Even with the England team on song — and the varying degrees of success enjoyed this summer by the under-21 and under-19 teams as well as the women’s senior and under-19 teams — there are plenty of sticks with which to beat the FA: the loss of sponsorship and broadcast contracts; the perceived lack of young English players emerging; the lack of progress made with the National Football Centre; the women’s game; the behaviour of players and spectators; even the Wembley pitch.
All were discussed over the course of an hour in Watmore’s company, but let us go back to the issue raised about those clubs — and he was talking in general terms, not about Portsmouth, Notts County or anyone else — where sensible judgment gives way to wild risk-taking, threatening the existence of historic institutions that are intrinsic to their communities.
“It’s easy to say there are good and bad owners,” Watmore said. “It’s less easy to write it down in ways that you can then apply. Richard Scudamore [the Premier League chief executive] once said something like, ‘What are we supposed to do? Have a ‘Cut-of-their-jib?’ test?’ I know precisely what he meant.
“The leagues have been very active in trying to strengthen their fit and proper persons test. I take a strong view that boards of directors have a long-term responsibility to their club and that’s where I would put the responsibility.
“When you get boards of directors that overreach themselves in a catastrophic way and a club goes into ten years of decline, I absolutely condemn that sort of behaviour as much as I would condemn anything, because directors need to understand they have a responsibility. Football clubs are so important to so many people’s lives and their communities. They are not things to be played around with.”
Watmore cares about football. He cares about where the next generation of England footballers is coming from, but that is not to say that he is worried by it. “Again, the perception from the outside is, ‘Oh, they don’t develop players.’ I challenge that. If you mean at the highest level of the game, we had four of our national teams in finals this summer. That, to me, doesn’t demonstrate a lack of talent coming through.”
But will they get the chance to play first-team football? Even the Premier League’s new “home-grown player” ruling seems to encourage clubs to import the best youngsters from abroad as much as grow their own.
“Having spoken to people at various clubs, bringing through young English players is what they want to do,” Watmore said. “If you look at what Arsène Wenger is doing at Arsenal, a lot of his current youth team is English. If you ask the clubs if they prefer to bring in foreign players, the answer is that they prefer to develop the talent in these shores.”
So, if the flow of English talent from the academies remains steady, or better, how best to ensure that the national team’s recent results under Capello become the norm rather than the exception? “If we can get the National Football Centre [at present an empty plot of land in Burton upon Trent] up and running, that will really help because, with the research into medicine and sports science, our footballers can become even better than they otherwise would.
“What we’ve asked our team to do is to put together a business case with a real plan for what we’re going to do, how much it’s going to cost and how we’re going to fund it, with commercial partners and so on. We have a board meeting at the end of October when it will be presented and we will see the strength of that business case.
“We want to do it, because there’s a great will to go forward, but we won’t start until it’s right. It costs money and it has got to be sustainably fundable.”
Investment in sport tends to pay. But in this economic climate, the showiness of previous FA regimes — or the complacency of the more distant past — would not work. This is no climate in which to leave common sense at the gates. But even Sutcliffe has praised Watmore as “a clever cookie”. And if Sutcliffe is giving something at the FA the thumbs-up, it must be good.
Go ahead, punk...
•Ian Watmore’s move from Whitehall to Wembley, to work alongside Lord Triesman, led some to wonder whether the FA had appointed a clone of Sir Humphrey Appleby, the character from the 1980s sitcom Yes Minister.
•Watmore, 50, has a colourful background, one that, beyond his success in his professional life and his family, revolves around his twin passions for music and Arsenal.
•His love of Arsenal dates back to childhood, when his father worked on the club’s medical staff. He once referred to the night they won the Premier League title at Old Trafford in May 2002 as the best in his life.
•As for music, Watmore was a punk in his days at Trinity College, Cambridge. “I spent every Friday at the Corn Exchange pogoing to a host of punk bands,” he once said. “And I still own a disco today which I run for community events, with everything from Cockney Rebel to the Scissor Sisters.”
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/article6857792.ece
October 2, 2009
‘Clubs are just too important to be played about with by bad owners’
Ian Watmore, the new FA chief executive, has made a strong first impression in what was once considered an impossible job
Oliver Kay, Football Correspondent
The conversation had just turned to club ownership when Ian Watmore made the observation — second-hand, he was keen to stress — that sensible and successful people have a strange tendency to “leave their best judgment behind at the gates” when they enter the mind- altering world of football.
The same might be said of administrators, to judge from the experiences of some, though not quite all, of Watmore’s predecessors as chief executive of the FA. There was Graham Kelly, the football man who was forced to resign over an allegedly improper loan to the FA of Wales; there was Adam Crozier, the advertising executive who had barely begun his expensive facelift of the governing body when he decamped to Royal Mail; and there was Mark Palios, the insolvency practitioner who stood down over his handling of the unedifying scandal that arose from Sven- Göran Eriksson’s dalliance with a secretary.
When Brian Barwick, a former television executive, departed last year with his dignity intact but his authority damaged, it seemed that the position was entering the same “impossible job” territory as the England manager’s role pre-Fabio Capello. But Watmore, a punk-loving Arsenal fanatic who previously served as permanent secretary for the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, has, like Capello, managed to make himself at home very quickly, going some way, he hopes, to addressing the recent criticisms made of the organisation by Gerry Sutcliffe, the Sports Minister.
“One thing I have tried to do is go out and about around the game,” he said. “I’ve met most of my predecessors and the previous chairmen. I’ve tried to meet people from the professional clubs, right through to non-League clubs and the amateur game. I’ve met people who aren’t immediately obvious, but with each of them, there has been a purpose in seeking their viewpoint on football. If I disagree with it, fine, but at least I know why and I can piece it together.
"That perception about the FA [in relation to Sutcliffe’s comments about the time taken to implement the recommendations of the Burns report] has been around for ever. For as long as I’ve been watching football and taking an interest, people have made those kind of complaints. That seems to be the nature of the beast. What I think you have to do is get beneath that and say, ‘What are the real issues and are we dealing with them?’ ”
The real issues are numerous. Even with the England team on song — and the varying degrees of success enjoyed this summer by the under-21 and under-19 teams as well as the women’s senior and under-19 teams — there are plenty of sticks with which to beat the FA: the loss of sponsorship and broadcast contracts; the perceived lack of young English players emerging; the lack of progress made with the National Football Centre; the women’s game; the behaviour of players and spectators; even the Wembley pitch.
All were discussed over the course of an hour in Watmore’s company, but let us go back to the issue raised about those clubs — and he was talking in general terms, not about Portsmouth, Notts County or anyone else — where sensible judgment gives way to wild risk-taking, threatening the existence of historic institutions that are intrinsic to their communities.
“It’s easy to say there are good and bad owners,” Watmore said. “It’s less easy to write it down in ways that you can then apply. Richard Scudamore [the Premier League chief executive] once said something like, ‘What are we supposed to do? Have a ‘Cut-of-their-jib?’ test?’ I know precisely what he meant.
“The leagues have been very active in trying to strengthen their fit and proper persons test. I take a strong view that boards of directors have a long-term responsibility to their club and that’s where I would put the responsibility.
“When you get boards of directors that overreach themselves in a catastrophic way and a club goes into ten years of decline, I absolutely condemn that sort of behaviour as much as I would condemn anything, because directors need to understand they have a responsibility. Football clubs are so important to so many people’s lives and their communities. They are not things to be played around with.”
Watmore cares about football. He cares about where the next generation of England footballers is coming from, but that is not to say that he is worried by it. “Again, the perception from the outside is, ‘Oh, they don’t develop players.’ I challenge that. If you mean at the highest level of the game, we had four of our national teams in finals this summer. That, to me, doesn’t demonstrate a lack of talent coming through.”
But will they get the chance to play first-team football? Even the Premier League’s new “home-grown player” ruling seems to encourage clubs to import the best youngsters from abroad as much as grow their own.
“Having spoken to people at various clubs, bringing through young English players is what they want to do,” Watmore said. “If you look at what Arsène Wenger is doing at Arsenal, a lot of his current youth team is English. If you ask the clubs if they prefer to bring in foreign players, the answer is that they prefer to develop the talent in these shores.”
So, if the flow of English talent from the academies remains steady, or better, how best to ensure that the national team’s recent results under Capello become the norm rather than the exception? “If we can get the National Football Centre [at present an empty plot of land in Burton upon Trent] up and running, that will really help because, with the research into medicine and sports science, our footballers can become even better than they otherwise would.
“What we’ve asked our team to do is to put together a business case with a real plan for what we’re going to do, how much it’s going to cost and how we’re going to fund it, with commercial partners and so on. We have a board meeting at the end of October when it will be presented and we will see the strength of that business case.
“We want to do it, because there’s a great will to go forward, but we won’t start until it’s right. It costs money and it has got to be sustainably fundable.”
Investment in sport tends to pay. But in this economic climate, the showiness of previous FA regimes — or the complacency of the more distant past — would not work. This is no climate in which to leave common sense at the gates. But even Sutcliffe has praised Watmore as “a clever cookie”. And if Sutcliffe is giving something at the FA the thumbs-up, it must be good.
Go ahead, punk...
•Ian Watmore’s move from Whitehall to Wembley, to work alongside Lord Triesman, led some to wonder whether the FA had appointed a clone of Sir Humphrey Appleby, the character from the 1980s sitcom Yes Minister.
•Watmore, 50, has a colourful background, one that, beyond his success in his professional life and his family, revolves around his twin passions for music and Arsenal.
•His love of Arsenal dates back to childhood, when his father worked on the club’s medical staff. He once referred to the night they won the Premier League title at Old Trafford in May 2002 as the best in his life.
•As for music, Watmore was a punk in his days at Trinity College, Cambridge. “I spent every Friday at the Corn Exchange pogoing to a host of punk bands,” he once said. “And I still own a disco today which I run for community events, with everything from Cockney Rebel to the Scissor Sisters.”
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/article6857792.ece
