Editorial Comment: FA corruption exposes Britain’s double standards Sam Allardyce
Sam Allardyce

Sam Allardyce

ENGLISH football, whose Premiership is very popular in this country, has plunged into a soul-searching grief as it battles the demons that surfaced this week amid stunning newspaper revelations that it is being choked by a corruption vice which has already claimed the scalp of England manager Sam Allardyce.

The man commonly known as Big Sam was sacked this week by his employers, the Football Association, just 67 days into his appointment after his position became untenable following revelations in the Daily Telegraph that his morality was questionable when he fell prey to a sting operation by the newspaper.

Allardyce was filmed by undercover reporters, posing as businessmen, saying he could help them circumvent the rules and regulations that ban third-party ownership of players who are brought into the English Premiership and how he was prepared to moonlight for them to get an extra £400 000 on top of his 3 million pound salary.

Since then, Barnsley Football Club, who are in the second-tier Championship league of English football have terminated the contract of assistant head coach Tommy Wright after he was caught in the same sting operation accepting a £5 000 payment from the same bogus Asian investment firm and agreeing he could recommend the hiring of players owned by that bogus company to be engaged by his club in exchange for extra payment.

Another English Championship club, Queens Park Rangers, have also launched an internal investigation into the conduct of their manager, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, a former Chelsea star after the Daily Telegraph claimed he requested about £55 000 to work for a bogus Asian firm who wanted to sell players to his club.

The revelations have shaken English football to the core and on Thursday the English FA said they were now cooperating with the police to see if those found to have abused their positions of trust could face possible criminal prosecution.

What is undeniable is that corruption runs deep in the fabric of English football. What is surprising to us is that it has taken the British this long to either realise that something is horribly amiss in this multi-billion dollar industry, or to finally wake up from their slumber of sickening denial.

We don’t condone corruption and that is why we have taken a leading role as an authoritative newspaper of record in this country to position ourselves in the frontline of the battle against those who thrive on corrupt activities. This is a cancer that should be eliminated from our society.

What we find ironic is that the same British media who launched a vicious battle to topple the FIFA leadership of Sepp Blatter accusing it of corruption, appeared to turn a blind eye to a cancer right on its doorstep as its national game was being consumed by merchants of corruption.

The same English FA who played a leading role in bringing down Blatter and his FIFA executive whom they accused of corruption, have now been unmasked as an organisation that found it convenient to ignore the rot that was devouring their game and which, as the leaders, needed to deal with.

The same British government officials who threw themselves onto the football battlefields and launched a relentless campaign to topple the FIFA leadership, now find themselves exposed as hypocrites who decided to turn a blind eye to the massive corruption that has been consuming their national game.

Working in conjunction with their United States and Swiss counterparts, they tapped the conversations of the FIFA executive committee members and monitored their bank accounts while, at the same time, pretending as if their football industry was operating above board even when the coach of their national team, as has now been exposed, was a disciple of greed and dishonesty.

Probably that shouldn’t surprise us given that the British, as they have done in politics, including an all-out war against the leadership of this country, have the tendency to portray themselves as the messengers of integrity when, in actual fact, they have as many, if not worse, moral fault lines as those they accuse of not living up to their lofty expectations.

It’s a shame that we have people in this country who believe the British represent purity, and look at them as angels who can never do wrong and are an example for the entire world to follow.

But, as the exploding corruption in English football has revealed, they are humans too and the sooner we accept this reality and set our own standards, the better for us.

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