LONDON -- The CEO of the FA admitted there was a “brittleness” to the England team when playing abroad but made positive comments about the FA’s relationship with the Premier League, saying the governing body needed to “harness the power of the Premier League.”
In a wide-ranging interview at Thursday’s Leaders Sport Business Summit, Martin Glenn touched on a number of issues, including the growth of the women’s game, the development of young English players, recruitment of England managers, and the scrutiny England’s top management faces.
However, he was not probed in detail about a difficult summer, which has seen some question his leadership amid the controversy over the sacking of Mark Sampson as manager of the England’s women’s team. Glenn was interviewed on stage along with Rugby Football Union CEO Ian Ritchie.
“England players do not travel well,” Glenn said, in reference to England’s humiliating exit from the recent European Championships after losing to Iceland. “They don’t tend to play abroad. Their familiarity with international camps isn’t that great. And so we know there is a brittleness in unfamiliar circumstances.” He said that the FA was responsible for not offering better psychological support to the players. “Out of failure you learn from it and you hopefully build,” Glenn said.
Asked about the FA’s relationship with Premier League clubs and the clubs being amenable to releasing players to play for England, Glenn said, “I think we have never had better collaboration in terms of player releases. We are better off collaborating [with the FA] than we are sort of in a silo pointing fingers at each other. English football has massive reach, billions of people across the world watch English football. That has to be good. The success of the Premier League allows us to sell FA Cup rights internationally for a lot of money. Why wouldn’t we harness the paper that is there within the Premier league and the EFL? I get absolutely indignant about the suggestion that players, when they play for England, don’t really care. Because it’s not anything like that in my experience. You know that they don’t take a penny in match fees, they give it to charity. And when you get them to close their eyes and say, ‘What is the one medal you would love to win?' They all come back with the World Cup or the Euros."
He continued, “There is real hunger there. Our job is how do you channel that hunger and equip them with the tools that are needed to play in international tournaments? If anyone’s got any scintilla of a thought that England players don’t care about playing for England, lose it from your mind right now. They care passionately.”
Glenn also touched on the growing popularity of women’s football, on the back of a successful summer for the women’s national team, which reached the semifinal of the Women’s European Championships. “It’s a massive drive for the FA," he said. "We have got a very ambitious goal of doubling the size of the women’s game by 2020."
Leaders is owned and operated by American City Business Journals.
John Reynolds is a writer in London.
