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By Andrew Warshaw
March 23 – Football Association chairman Lord Triesman (pictured) today categorically denied that personality clashes had led to the shock resignation of chief executive Ian Watmore.
As current chief operating officer Alex Horne stepped up to fill the gap vacated by Watmore on a temporary basis, Triesman admitted, however, that his former number two had become frustrated at the slow pace of change within FA ranks.
After only nine months in the job, Watmore, regarded as the most savvy FA chief executive of recent years, resigned on Monday, throwing English football into turmoil amid reports that he could not work with several board members.
At an emergency FA board meeting, Horne was named as Watmore’s temporary replacement with immediate effect.
And in a statement defending the integrity of the organisation, the board refuted the various reasons cited for Watmore’s surprise exit.
“The board strongly believe that the FA and all of English football’s stakeholders are strong and capable enough of changing and developing the game under their own authority,” the statement said.
“The board will always try to act in ways that are right for the game.
“Further to reports following Ian Watmore’s announcement, the Board are clear that the professional game has not blocked proposals for change.
“Additionally, the Board does not accept that Ian’s departure is down to any one individual or any personality clash.”
Watmore opposed the slow-moving committee structure of the FA, and believed he was being blocked by Premier League chairman Sir Dave Richards on a number of issues.
But taking up the same theme, Triesman told the BBC: “The board took the view this is not about personalities or things being blocked.”
He suggested that Watmore simply wanted fix things too quickly.
“Some people want to achieve things on a fast timetable and feel frustrated if they can’t do as much as they would like to,” Triesman said.
“That is probably one of the things that is at bottom of this.
“Ian did a lot of things and is a fine guy but ….we couldn’t move at a pace he thought right.”
Triesman said the organisation would leave no stone unturned to appoint a high-calibre replacement and that the appointment would not be made until after England’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup is voted on by FIFA in December.
Triesman flies to Israel for the UEFA Congress on Wednesday and is due to meet with all eight European members of the FIFA Executive Committee.
“I don’t think FIFA members will see this as an issue at all,” he insisted.
Meanwhile, Richards himself denied that a personality clash was at the heart of Watmore’s shock resignation, describing the claim as “utter rubbish”.
But former FA executive director David Davies believes the governing body is “riven with conflicts of interest” and faces a “huge challenge” following Watmore’s departure.
Davies had several spells as acting chief executive of the FA and said: “Like a lot of people, I was very impressed by how Ian Watmore had begun.
“He had only been in the job effectively since last June.
“The reality is the FA has now lost five chief executives in little more than a decade.
“Most of them in my view – Ian Watmore is just the latest, it seems – have been victims of the chronic instability inherent in the way English football is run.
“The structure builds in conflict, which is hardly surprising given it is riven with conflicts of interest and people’s roles and responsibilities are either blurred, or not defined at all, or worse still set up in competition with each other.
“If an organisation loses five chief executives in little more than a decade you can’t really believe they were not all up to the job.
“There has to be something fundamentally not right.”
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