Mark Sampson should have been sacked ‘three or four years ago’

Football Association chairman Greg Clarke says the decision to sack England women’s coach Mark Sampson should have happened “three or four years ago”.

Sampson was fired last month after a 2015 safeguarding report was revisited concerning his time as a coach at Bristol Academy. Sampson left the academy to become England women’s manager in December 2013. The following year the FA was “made aware of the allegations concerning his inappropriate relationships” in his previous job.

A safeguarding panel examined the allegations and subsequently cleared Sampson to continue to be a “participant in football”, although he was sent on a development and mentoring programme to learn the appropriate boundaries between coach and player.

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In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Clarke declined to blame FA technical director Dan Ashworth for allegedly overlooking claims about Sampson, who was said to have had “inappropriate” relationships with female players at Bristol Academy.

Clarke said: “When you get to the point where the new chairman and the new chief executive find out something that wasn’t shared with the board a long time ago [details of Sampson’s time in Bristol], do you think – that’s a shame, we’d have done something if we’d known, or do you make a decision?

“Martin [Glenn, FA chief executive] said – ‘Look, I found this out yesterday.’ I said – ‘Right, what do you think?’ He told me, I agreed with him and we had a board conference call. We sent out some papers, we asked some questions about legalities, facts, what happened when. And we made a decision.

“Now, that’s the sort of decision that should have been made three or four years ago, but you can’t use that as an excuse to duck the decision today.”