The woes of the gaffe prone, embroiled Football Association show no sign of abating. They are still searching for a new Chief Executive, a task made the more complicated by the fact that the Government demands that whoever it be, he must not have been involved in football for at least a year. Hugh Robertson, the present sports minister, who appears to believe that a stadium is properly described with the plural of the Latin word, Stadia, may well be displeased by such defiance. But the office of sports minister, whatever the Government, tends to remind one of the old Victorian saying, "He's the fool of the family, so make him a parson".Mr Robertson meanwhile says that he is excited by the prospect that either West Ham United or Tottenham Hotspur may after the 2012 Olympics, move into the Olympic Stadium. A move which would entail less of a journey for West Ham, already deep in the East End, than for Spurs, so long established in North East London. They have only just expressed such an interest, their elaborate plans to expand their present stadium, or as Mr Robertson would say, stadia, at Tottenham High Road, having been frowned upon by both the police and by local businesses.
As to the FA's search for a new leader, they could surely do worse than to think of the admittedly controversial but supremely active David Dein, who wheeled around South Africa during the recent World Cup, accompanied by the Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, whom he himself brought to Highbury, back in 1996, despite the opposition of ill-informed supporters.
Dein was eased out of Arsenal when he clashed with other directors, who wanted the club to move, as it so successfully has done, to the nearby site which has become the giant Emirates Stadium, while Dein wished to move farther afield. Dein made a fortune out of his Arsenal shares though when he originally bought some, the then Chairman of the club, Peter Hill-Wood, said that they were "dead". They came alive, Dein increased his interests, sold some of his shares at huge profit to Danny Fiszman, the most powerful director, and more recently, pocketed a cool £70 million plus when he sold his remaining shares to the Uzbek entrepreneur Alisher Usmanov.
Another problem for the besieged FA is the matter of their projected national football centre at Burton; an on-off affair, which at last seemed to be coming to fruition when the Irish satellite television firm Setanta, went belly up, costing the FA some £70 million. This meant that to develop the 350 acre site, bought back in 2001, 28 houses and a hotel would have to be built there. Planning permission was granted, but the local residents understandably, ferociously opposed the alteration of the picturesque landscape. They have raised three major objections to the scheme and could well have the plans overturned.
Howard Wilkinson, once (none too successfully) England's manager, a European Cup contestant at Leeds, believes the centre to be "absolutely fundamental to any hopes the English game has of going forward". Well, France have such a centre near Paris which has turned out many fine players, but it hardly saved their World Cup team from ill-tempered mutiny, chaos and abject failure. Frankly, I can see the local residents' aesthetic point of view.
