Somewhere on the journey that led the Football Association to spend £757m on Wembley, £105m on St George’s Park, £6m a year on Fabio Capello, and £528,000 a year on current chief executive Alex Horne, the game’s governing body lost sight of what it was for.
The FA is not just for the England team, it is also about the 65,000 other adult and junior teams that play the national game. Belatedly they have woken up to this, though Horne’s surprise when a survey revealed 84 per cent of grassroots respondents said poor facilities were their biggest concern showed how out of touch the executive was.
It is to be hoped Greg Dyke, FA chairman, will reveal major proposals on Friday, and investment, in the second report of his England Commission. It is also to be hoped they are more likely to succeed than the half-baked plans for B teams and feeder clubs that undermined the first.
