The FA oversees the governance of England’s national game, it delivers coach education and manages the national teams. Its aim is to support the England national team and do everything it can to ensure the players are challenging for trophies. Instead the team has suffered years of underachievement. We were brought after the FA had started reviewing its operations for the overarching report The FA Chairman’s England Commission, which was established to consider the lack of available quality English players appearing regularly at the top of English football.
They found there were fewer qualified coaches at every level than anywhere else in Europe. The report also showed a systemic issue around how the coaches were valued in the English football system and underpinning that was the question: what do you learn from a coach, what skills do they need and what information did the FA have? As the owner of coach education, the FA didn’t have a clear view of how players and coaches made it to the top.
