The Football Association has a new chairman. Greg Dyke has left his position as chairman of Brentford and officially taken over the reins from David Bernstein at Wembley. He has emphasised that one of his main targets is to make the England teams successful.
On the face of it, that seems like a good place to start. After all, the national game has had little international success for a marked period now. But on the other hand, it could be argued that this is actually a trivial issue that will see the FA have to do a small amount of work.
St. George’s Park, the national football centre, is already up and running and its goal is to turn England’s fortunes round on the international stage. So how can someone come in when this process is already underway and state it to be one of his main targets?
What this kind of talk highlights, is an ageing organisation with limited influence on the modern game.
Fans have been constantly reminded that this is the FA’s 150th year, and in that time the administration has steered the sport through many major issues. But, arguably, in one of the most important episodes in English football history the FA failed to act and in doing so facilitated the state of the game today in terms of money and television.
When the FA allowed for the breakaway of the 22 clubs from the Football League to form the Premier League, it is believed that the FA failed to realise the magnitude of what they were doing in an attempt to weaken the Football League’s position.
One of the men at the centre of this breakaway was the managing director of London Weekend Television. The idea being proposed was that those teams forming the breakaway would only split television revenue between themselves, and not the entire Football League.
Since then, the television deal fees have ballooned and the Premier League has become the key player in English football with its financial influence, as has been widely reported.
LWT’s Greg Dyke was involved in meetings which led to the breakaway. Now, over 20 years down the line, he finds himself in charge of an organisation he played a part in effectively neutering.
Rather than focusing on the national teams which are supposed to already be being taken care of by the construction of St. George’s Park and all that has to offer, perhaps the FA chairman could look into bringing the FA back into a position of influence within the English game.
In recent weeks we have seen the FA reject an appeal from Doncaster Belles over their ‘relegation’ from the Women’s Super League, and the Football League have approved Coventry City’s application to play in Northampton.
Now would be as good a time as any, with a new chairman, to have a fresh start and address some of the more important issues in the game. It is at club level, not national level, that the organisation in charge of the game should be focusing their attentions.
Find me on Twitter: @dmsmith1987
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