Greg Clarke should not have resigned

It is a truth rarely acknowledged that when somebody loses a job for an offensive remark you will struggle to find out just what they said. News reports will screech that some travesty has occurred, the odd word may be quoted, but frequently you’ll be left to your own detective work.

The safe bet is that whatever was said will be laughably mild in its original context. And so, too, it proves with the undignified exit of Greg Clarke, now former chairman of the Football Association (FA).

Clarke quit the association on Tuesday after controversy at a parliamentary committee the same day. Speaking remotely, Clarke referred to “coloured” footballers, described homosexuality as a “choice”, and said that girls don’t want footballs kicked at them. Those at least were the top lines, or a “barrage of remarks”, to quote ITV News’ headline.

Of course, when someone is invited to speak to parliament the hope, generally, is that they will deliver a “barrage of remarks”, the alternative being glum and pointless silence. And Clarke’s real barrage was a full-throated support for every kind of diversity initiative.

Early on he conceded that the women’s game is “treated badly”, following complaints from a female MP that girls’ games were being stopped even while boys’ games were carrying on. Boys’ games were more likely to continue due to their affiliation with “elite” institutions, he explained, which can more easily afford the medical protocols needed to continue playing.

Beyond the Covid-19 pandemic, girls were less likely to have established clubs and facilities nearby, Clarke added. He went on to say that grassroots football, in general, was not diverse enough, even expressing hope that English football could run ahead of the UK’s demographic trends in its pursuit of diversity.

“What we have to do is treat each individual on their merits, but make sure we are inclusive and [that] our programmes which don’t cross the line into positive discrimination, but encourage people from all those communities to participate, from volunteering, from your local football, all the way to sitting on the Premier League board or the FA board,” he said, bigotry dripping from every syllable.

To be fair to his critics, Clarke did refer to “coloured” footballers, in what ITV News called the “most shocking moment” of the session. Specifically, he was noting that high-profile BAME footballers receive a lot of abuse on social media, and that this example might deter LGBT footballers from outing themselves for fear of being treated similarly. 

Perhaps what goes for “shocking” in sports journalism is weaker sauce than in the real world. But I suspect that nobody was shocked by what Clarke said, given that he was expressing clear sympathy with BAME players who are abused online and LGBT players who feel obliged to hide their identity.

Further outrage was prompted by Clarke’s passing description of being gay as a “choice”. The equally shocking context was his experience that homophobia was largely absent from football club dressing rooms, a condition he endorsed.

The chairman was also criticised for stating something that any demographer could tell you: that different ethnic groups are more prevalent in different types of work. Warning against treating BAME people as “an amorphous mass”, Clarke noted that black people were over-represented compared to ethnic South Asians in top-level football, but that the reverse was true in the IT department at the FA.

Sanjay Bhandari, chair of anti-racism group Kick It Out, described these as “lazy racist stereotypes”, but what Clarke said was a factual assertion which could be verified by studying the squads of Premier League clubs or visiting the FA’s IT department. The exact causes of such discrepancies should be open to legitimate dispute, but their existence isn’t.

More bemusing was criticism of Clarke for paraphrasing a female coach who argued that when young girls start playing football they “just don’t like having the ball kicked at them hard”. It is of course disputable whether this applies to young girls more readily than young boys, but the chair cannot be criticised for relaying experiences of female coaching staff.

For his part, Clarke has shown the requisite contrition as he leaves the FA. “My unacceptable words in front of Parliament were a disservice to our game and to those who watch, play, referee and administer it,” he said in a statement, claiming that he’d been planning on moving on now that Mark Bullingham has been installed as the FA’s new CEO.

His critics argue that “language matters”, but sentiment is what really counts. Innocent-sounding euphemisms have described any number of ghastly actions, while the less eloquent frequently stumble over warm wishes. Would it be too much to ask that we sack people for actual bigotry rather than verbal gaffes?

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