David Conn: Crozier leaves the beautiful game to the beasts

FA chief executive forced out by greedy Premiership clubs determined to emasculate game's governing body

Installed as the Football Association's chief executive in January 2000, Adam Crozier radiated the enthusiasm of a football fan handed a dream chance to work in the game he loved. Impatient to turn football around, he dismissed the suggestion that his job would mean negotiating a political snakepit: "We have to get away from all these divisions," he said. "There is a great deal of unity."

Crozier was put straight very quickly, slapped down by the Premier League and its four representatives on the FA's main board, who, in a startlingly similar rehearsal of this week's drama, complained that Crozier had not consulted them sufficiently before launching his three-year strategic plan. Sharp as a tack, Crozier understood from then that the beautiful game which he has played all his life is, in reality, run by the money and power-brokers of the big clubs.

It is a bitter reflection that his plans, now to be chucked on to the mountainous pile of football's lost opportunities, carried his fresh-faced promise to "use the power of football to create a better future."

His legacy is perhaps not as glittering as the hype claims, but Crozier was without question a progressive force with genuine instincts for the game. And, whatever the dismal detail of how-much-was-said-to-whom-when, which catalysed the battle waiting to happen with the Premier League, there is no doubt Crozier saw the Premiership-stuffed board as a hurdle to be overcome rather than an august body of custodians to consult. That failure to show due respect to directors wearing different hats, and bearing conflicts of interest, ultimately did for Crozier.

Many football lovers remain bemused by the politics infesting the game, and Crozier's departure has to be understood in the context of the natural rivalry between the FA and Premier League. The FA is the overall governing body, rooted in an amateur tradition of moral values, fair play and teamwork. From the 1880s its job has been to regulate, and harness, the inherent commercial self-interest of the professional clubs and leagues for the good of all who play or support the game.

Throughout its history of compromise, the FA has maintained some limited financial regulation of clubs, and the Football League redistributed money to preserve rough equality. Nobody, though, could pretend that the FA's ruling body, the 92-member council, drawn from the amateur county associations, not the professionals, was governing effectively by the time the 70s and 80s crashed into hooliganism, decline and, ultimately, at Bradford, Heysel and Hillsborough, disaster.

With reform imperative, the FA then threw away a momentous opportunity, rejecting the Football League's 1990 offer to unite, instead supporting the big First Division clubs' breakaway from sharing money and power in the Football League.

Since 1992, the Premier League's television deals alone have totalled around £2.5bn, to be carved up by only 22, now 20 clubs. Then, crucially, before Crozier arrived, the FA Council was bypassed with the establishment of the new board, staffed by six professional representatives and six from the counties. This was understood at the time to mean that the Premiership clubs had fundamentally gained power in the body supposed to be regulating them.

What this produced, the huge money pouring into a few clubs, with a governing body gradually emasculated, is illustrated nowhere more clearly than in the plush eighth floor of Soho Square itself, where the dismal board games have been played out. Of the Premier League representatives, Crozier finally lost the full backing of David Dein of Arsenal, who made a £22m loss financing last season's Double and whose grandiose stadium plans are £100m over budget. Peter Ridsdale, the Leeds chairman, announced a loss of £33.9m last month. Robert Coar is the chairman of Blackburn Rovers, whose huge annual losses are bankrolled by the estate of the late tax exile, Jack Walker. Dave Richards, who last year earned £176,667 as part-time chairman of the Premier League, left Sheffield Wednesday on the cusp of relegation and with £20m debts.

Crozier's forced resignation coincided with the departure of Terry Yorath as manager at Hillsborough, with Wednesday now facing a drop to the Second Division. The Football League members are John Elsom, whose club, Leicester City, went into administration last week owing £50m, and Peter Heard of Colchester, who rides continual challenges to his position as acting chairman of the League, which is in financial meltdown, but has no current chairman or chief executive.

The Mori research, whose launch by the FA sparked a row with the Premier League, found that an overwhelming majority of people, including half of the Premiership's club officials, believe the Premiership has too much of football's money. Crozier intended to use the research to justify further reforms, and it was dismally predictable that ultimately he was forced out by a row with the Premier League about money.

Richard Scudamore, the Premier League's chief executive, issued one of his rare statements by saying that the four Premier League board members had "a very constructive dialogue with colleagues at the FA", and he insisted that the Premier League wanted to preserve the FA's equal division of income between the professional game and the grass-roots. The Premier League officially said that the battle was about accountability after Crozier was accused of witholding detail about the England sponsorship deal.

Crozier himself, however, was clear that the demand for a professional game board, reporting to the main board, was a bid for control of the FA, and for more money from its main competition, the FA Cup, which the Premiership clubs have already demanded. This week, battered by a vicious press campaign, he decided he would not compromise his and the FA's independence by acceding to it. That was the issue described as "a difference of opinion over how the game should be run and regulated in the future," in the statement issued by Geoff Thompson, the FA chairman who failed to fight for Crozier this week against the Premiership barons.

Thompson's simultaneous praising and burying of Crozier's was routine 21st century PR, but while those in press and marketing departments favoured by Crozier were genuinely distraught, others in nitty gritty FA departments are not glowing unequivocally about his record.

In two key areas, grass-roots development and financial regulation, Crozier's initial energy has not been wholeheartedly followed through. True, the FA has a dedicated National Game Division for the first time ever, with a £16m budget and 42 staff, but Crozier himself did not devote much time to the grass-roots, which he himself argued is the FA's true purpose.

Crozier's original plan promised a "Financial Compliance Unit" to tackle the abuses for which the game and clubs are glaringly open, but this was diluted to a "Financial Advisory Unit", which delivers reports to clubs who are then free to completely ignore them. Crozier's progressive instinct that more must be done has been frustrated by the objections of Nic Coward, the FA's company secretary, whom Crozier recently instructed to provide "five positive ways in which regulations can work rather than five reasons why they won't."

David Dein on Thursday cited the move to Soho Square, the new Wembley and the National Football Centre as profound achievements. But many in the FA, and the Premier League, worry that all three involve huge expense, which the FA could better direct into core development work. And while the revenue has greatly increased ­ due substantially to Phil Carling, the former commercial director who negotiated the FA's new £405m TV deal ­ the FA's costs of £121m are not broken down and do look high, while the average salary works out at over £77,000.

Some within the FA, while acknowledging the huge progress made, wish Crozier had fought harder for the core values he initially set out. But many also acknowledge that the job is close to impossible, with events ­ Wembley, the England manager ­ dragging Crozier away, and the unavoidable ordeal of fighting the boardroom battles.

In the end, he was undone partly by being too purposeful in the "centre", failing to serve as a priority the 12 men with the power to fire him. Scudamore makes no such mistake, keeping a low profile and never failing to satisfy his bosses first. He is being tipped for Crozier's job now, and some claim he can do the impossible, satisfy the demands of the fat cats while propounding a vision for the wider game.

What did for Crozier, a bright man generally admired, was losing his fight to maintain the governing body's independence from the money men. Which makes this ugly, dispiriting saga a powerful advertisement for an independent regulator for football, never more urgently required, or further away.

davidconn@independent.co.uk

THE WRITING ON THE WALL

'The power of the Premier League, installed now at the heart of FA decision-making and inhabiting a different financial universe from the rest of the game, is an inescapable fact which Crozier will inevitably have to negotiate if he is to realise his admirable vision.'

David Conn, February 2000