AS IF YOU DIDN'T KNOW

Last updated : 22 September 2004 By Editor
Former FA bungmeister Graham Bean complained that he had his hands tied by the FA in fighting corruption but has since refused to reveal what he learnt and expose the criminals taking fans’ money out of the game. In today’s Guardian he alleges that the Pope goes to the toilet in wooded areas, whilst some bears are actually Catholics (or something like that…)

My appointment as the Football Association's first compliance officer in 1999 came on the back of an inquiry that included a look into Clough's conduct after he was alleged to have taken unauthorised payments in connection with transfers.

He was never found guilty of anything on that front. Although his assistant Ronnie Fenton was punished, we cannot assume Clough would have been, had the Football Association not decided to drop the case against him because of his ill health.

But Clough managed during an era that had an aura of suspicion around it. There was a sense of "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" about those days, not just around managers but around the game in general, from players right up to chairmen.

These days the world of murky payments is much more refined. I think the emergence of agents has done that. Things have changed to the point where you have suspicion around secondary payments and offshore accounts.

What that means is an agent will receive a fee from a club or an individual for his work in a transfer and then there might be two or three other people down the line who get a cut of the money for their help.

They are usually other agents but the suspicion is that somewhere along the line some of the money will filter back to a participant within the game. It goes through a number of channels first and that makes any investigation into corruption more difficult.

But is the will and the way there from the football authorities to get to the bottom of these things? As any experienced investigator will tell you, the last thing you do is tell anyone what you are up to. It may well be that the football authorities in this country are conducting inquiries behind the scenes.

But I wonder whether they are geared up enough to tackle this head on. From my days in the police I know that it was always easier to get to the bottom of something when you hunted in packs as opposed to being a one-man band.

You look at the staffing levels and you have to question it. I was the first compliance officer at the FA and for the best part of three years I was a one-man band. The FA was advised in an independent report to introduce a compliance unit and it took that on board but appointed a single compliance officer.

Among the people who conduct the investigations there is a real will to achieve something. But I think the game at large is happy just to let things carry on. I get the feeling the attitude is that, if someone falls foul of something, great, but do not necessarily go looking for it.

Football is a tight-knit industry and I think there would be a fear that a series of major exposures would hit the game's image. Marketing and sponsorship are a big part of football now and I am pretty sure some of the companies involved would not want to be associated with a tarnished game.