September 21 – Having previously been cleared of any wrongdoing, Mark Sampson has been sacked as England women’s head coach following evidence of unidentified “inappropriate and unacceptable” behaviour with female players in a previous job.
Sampson was cleared after being accused of “bullying and discrimination” by former international forward Eniola Aluko who revealed that when she told Sampson she had family from Nigeria coming to watch a game, he replied: “Make sure they don’t bring Ebola with them.”
But the English Football Association said he was dismissed over entirely separate allegations made back in 2014 and investigated at the time when he was manager of top-flight side Bristol Academy.
The 34-year-old Welshman became England head coach in December 2013 after leaving Bristol Academy, now renamed Bristol City Women. His England side beat Russia 6-0 in a World Cup qualifier on Tuesday, ultimately his final game in charge, while under his tenure England reached back-to-back semi-finals at major tournaments.
An FA statement said: “The full report of that [2014] investigation was only brought to the attention of the current FA leadership last week. It is our judgement that it revealed clear evidence of inappropriate and unacceptable behaviour by a coach. It is on this basis that we have acted quickly to agree a termination of Mark’s contract.”
English FA CEO Martin Glenn denied that the organisation had simply found a convenient way to get rid of Sampson after weeks of scrutiny about his conduct with England.
“I can understand why people would say that but they are two very different things,” Glenn told the BBC. “The concerns Eni Aluko raised were about perceived bullying and perceived racism. We have investigated those properly, there have been two separate investigations actually which have broadly concluded there’s no systematic evidence for that.
“This is a different issue, this is about his conduct before his time at the FA which we judge just isn’t consistent with the standards that an FA employee needs to show.”
Glenn said he regretted Sampson had been allowed to occupy such a position for almost four years. “There was a full investigation, a proper investigation, an assessment process and when the report concluded in March 2015 he was deemed not to be a safeguarding risk,” Glenn was quoted as saying. “However, the full report of that investigation was only made known to me last week.”
Britain’s Minister for Sport Tracey Crouch described the whole process as “a mess” and said it raised “very serious questions” about due diligence and “whether the historic processes that the FA had in place around the recruitment of coaches were appropriate, for something like this to have been missed. The FA are right to have taken action but reassurance is needed to make sure this does not happen again at any level of coaching.”
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