According to Martin Glenn, the Football Association chief executive who broke the news, Mark Sampson was “calm but angry” as he found out from a fourth‑floor office at Wembley that his luck had finally run out.
The summons had come the night before.
Sampson arrived around midday and the formalities did not last too long once he realised that a scandal had caught up with him – just not the scandal, perhaps, that most people might have envisaged.
That does not make the other allegations swirling around the now-deposed England Women’s manager any less serious or change the fact that a second crisis is running concurrently – a story featuring racism allegations, hush money and yet more evidence of systematic failure – that needs a proper ending rather than any more of the FA’s attempted spin, deflection and pulling down of shutters.
The Eni Aluko affair, a story this newspaper has been driving for several weeks,
Authentic Andrew Whitworth Womens Jersey is already threatening to go to the top of the FA now that a third investigation is under way and the culture, media and sport select committee is summoning the relevant people to explain the gaping holes in the previous two inquiries.
If, that is, it can still be called the Eni Aluko affair when a second player, Drew Spence, will meet the barrister Katharine Newton on Friday for an interview that should have taken place the best part of a year ago. As if Sampson does not have enough on his plate, Spence intends to corroborate Aluko’s version of events by saying she, too, was the recipient of an allegedly racial remark.
Ultimately, though, Sampson has gone for something entirely different, involving a safeguarding investigation that went on for the best part of a year, a breakdown in communications within the FA structure and,
http://www.losangelesramsauthorizedstore.com/benny-cunningham-jersey-elite it appears, some particularly dubious behaviour from his time at Bristol Academy where there are first-hand reports that some of the club’s trips were more like a coming together of stag- and hen-dos.
No doubt more will come out in time but it is not going to be pretty when it involves a football manager, a number of backroom staff, a women’s team and a culture where, according to reliable evidence, some of the more sensible players became increasingly alarmed about what was deemed acceptable.
Stories about Bristol Academy have been floating around for some time and a lot of them now appear to be true.
Andrew Quarless Womens Jersey For the moment, we will probably have to join the dots. “No law was broken but we felt that, during his time at Bristol, Mark had overstepped the professional boundaries between player and coach,” Glenn said.
There will be some, undoubtedly, who find this all a bit convenient. Here we have the FA, in the midst of what could be an appalling race controversy, suddenly finding an entirely separate reason to get rid of the alleged offender for something that happened in his previous employment.
Glenn was at pains to absolve himself of any responsibility and also said the same about Greg Clarke, the chairman. Dan Ashworth, the technical director,
http://www.officialauthenticlions.com/WOMENS_YOUTH_ANTWIONE_WILLIAMS_JERSEY.html was the person who appointed Sampson, championed him and brought him through the system. Surely he could have stopped this? “No,” Glenn again insisted. And it was staggering how it panned out – all of the FA’s top three executives were, apparently, not to blame one bit.
