Welcome to Wembley for England versus Bulgaria in this EURO 2020 Qualifier.
The new football season has just kicked off, although we’ve already had a busy summer with England of course.
The Lionesses united the nation with their run to the World Cup semi-finals and Gareth Southgate's team took third place in the inaugural Nations League.
It was great to see women’s football taking centre stage, not only on the football calendar, but in the papers, social media and on TV. I know the BBC were ecstatic with their viewing figures, with a record 11.7m watching England’s semi-final against the USA.
I’m looking forward to this success continuing into the new season for the WSL. It’s great to see that we will be playing some games at clubs' main stadia this year and I will be at Stamford Bridge tomorrow supporting women’s football at the sold-out Chelsea v Spurs fixture.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to congratulate England stalwart Lucy Bronze for winning UEFA’s Women’s player of the year.
The Lionesses work over the summer also earned Team GB a place in Tokyo 2020 which will be another fantastic experience before they return to home soil for EURO 2021.
This makes it a very special time for England and Wembley in particular. This iconic stadium will be hosting successive EURO finals, with the pan-European men’s EURO 2020 finishing here too.
And that is what tonight is all about- getting to the EURO 2020 finals. There’s not long to go now. After two fine wins in qualifying. That’s 12 successive EURO qualifier wins for England now by the way. We are in good shape.
Just six more group games to go and we will know our fate and, hopefully, we will have qualified for a EURO 2020 which will start and maybe even finish for us on home soil.
First of all this afternoon, I’d like to welcome our friends from the Bulgarian Football Union and wish them the best of luck for tonight. I would like to invite President Borislav Mihaylov to join me on stage to receive a gift.
In my speech at the Emirates FA Cup Final, I reflected on what had been achieved last season. Our game is in good shape both financially and on the pitch. We have exciting years ahead for both England teams with the Olympics and the EUROs just around the corner. Meanwhile the Premier League remains both vibrant nationally and successful internationally and The Emirates FA Cup has already started with the first qualifying round.
But right now there are a couple of areas of the game that concern me deeply. They are racism and club sustainability.
We continue to fight racism in football and society. This week, The FA President Prince William expressed his personal abhorrence of racism, a sentiment I am sure everybody here shares.
At the end of last season we announced a raft of initiatives with the Premier League and EFL to tackle racism for this season - both in the professional and grassroots game. For example, The FA is updating minimum sentencing for discrimination and creating new sentencing guidelines for increased sanctions and mandatory education. We are also providing new processes and resource to help improve the quality and speed of resolving cases in the grassroots.
We are also continuing to provide bursaries for aspiring BAME and female coaches and on Monday announced the next phase of our Elite Coach Placement Programme, with six talented BAME coaches joining the England coaching ranks for the 2019-20 season, led by Chris Powell who is with Gareth’s coaching team for the first time today.
The leagues, too are putting in place new initiatives for this season including improving reporting mechanisms, stewarding and working with their clubs on the best ways to tackle offenders.
This is all hugely important work, but while we come together to fight racism in our stadia, our players are now increasingly coming under fire in their day to day lives outside the grounds on social media. I have seen vile posts aimed at BAME and female players. It is sickening.
We have asked Government to work with us on this issue. They are due to publish a response to the recent Online Harms Consultation by the end of the year and the Minister for Sport, Nigel Adams, has been very strong on the topic, promising that the Government will hold social media companies to account and that they will set out world-leading plans to make online companies legally responsible for tackling this disgusting behaviour when it occurs on social media platforms. This would clearly be hugely welcomed.
Strong actions are needed though if we are to genuinely tackle this. It’s well within social media companies’ capabilities for their algorithms to check for abuse and even check context. They could even require proof of identity to open a social media account.
When money laundering became a problem we were all required by law to prove who we were and where we lived in order to open a bank account. It can be done for social media with the will and effective legislation. The trolls who abuse women and BAME players would have nowhere to hide. Social media companies would no doubt complain about cost or freedom of speech. My sympathy is with the abused, not the multi-billion dollar corporations.
We must succeed in this fight.
The cost of failure for football is real. The spectre of partial or total ground closures awaits us if we fail. In Scotland, Rangers are being punished by UEFA for racist sectarian chanting; they had to close part of the ground for last week’s sell out tie.
This is where ineffective action against racism ends up. Closed grounds, hurting clubs and penalising the huge majority of decent, law abiding and football loving fans. This is the price of not defeating racism. Scotland is an example but the problem is one for all of football.
My other pressing concern is club sustainability.
I know first-hand how difficult it is to keep a community club solvent. My strong view is the root cause of this problem is the financial losses the large majority of EFL clubs make.
Anyone who has followed the agonies of the Bury and Bolton fans over the last few weeks will understand why cost control regulations should be tough and need to be adhered to. Prevention is far better than cure, saving a club once it is already on its knees is a painful and hard task and may attract the wrong sort of opportunistic owners. Of course, the competence and probity of new owners must be tested, but it is the grinding pressure to offload loss makings clubs that creates opportunities for the less scrupulous.
But the fundamental problem is that many of these clubs are not financially viable and good owners run out of money. A good owner, desperate to sell a loss-making club, is loath to vote for regulations limiting his possibilities to sell. If we can restore financial viability through regulation, decent people including fans, can own our clubs without running out of money. This will help prevent opportunistic purchases by owners of low credibility or reputation.
There are those who believe club owners should be able to invest what they like into their clubs in pursuit of success. My opinion is that this needs to be underwritten by long-term guaranteed funding. Otherwise when the going gets tough, owners and funding disappear and only debts and onerous contracts remain.
Leagues are run by clubs and club owners are reluctant to agree to limits on their power to run their businesses, that they invest in, as they see fit. I understand this but the need to protect our precious community clubs overrides this in my opinion.
The clubs’ futures must be protected and efforts to control costs must be regulated to avoid clubs running out of cash and good owners being replaced by less scrupulous leadership. Maybe this limits ambition, but it may also limit the loss of our precious community clubs. How many Bury’s are we willing to tolerate before we summon the will to act?
The FA cannot and does not seek to compel action. The imperative is for the clubs to empower their Board and executives to come up with regulatory proposals to restore their leagues to financial balance and avoid draining the pockets of good owners. Any help we can provide to achieve this will be freely and enthusiastically provided but to be clear this has to be led by the league and its clubs to gain traction.
This is a real challenge for football.
The EFL has already said lessons must be learned from Bury’s demise and I was pleased to see the EFL launch an independent review on Thursday. We would be happy to support them in any way we can in this process in order to create a new sustainable model and financial regulation framework that allows clubs to live within their means without draining the pockets of good owners and creating opportunities for bad ones.
I do hope Bury will be back- many have before, like Accrington Stanley who, in 1962, were expelled by the league, but have fought back through the ranks and into the EFL. Likewise the resurrection of AFC Wimbledon has been an inspiration to me. It was rescued by its fans and clawed its way back into the EFL. Their new ground development is progressing well. It can be done.
I wish the Bury fans all the best and I hope the club can remain at the heart of the community.
Thank you once again for joining us for today’s match and I hope you have a great afternoon.
