Mark Sampson sacked as England manager by FA after past unprofessional relationship with players

Mark Sampson was sacked as England Women’s manager today for inappropriate relationships with his female players during his previous spell as manager of Bristol Academy.

Football Association CEO Martin Glenn made the decision after reading a 2015 FA safeguarding report into Sampson concerning his relationships with his players while at Bristol, where he ran the 16 to 19 programme and coached their women’s first team. The FA safeguarding panel decided in March 2015 that Sampson could continue to work in football, but when Glenn reviewed the report in detail he decided, along with the FA board, that Sampson had “overstepped the professional boundaries between player and coach”.

There is no accusation of illegal activity against Sampson. “Nothing illegal to our knowledge took place,” Glenn said in a hastily-convened press briefing at Wembley on Wednesday afternoon. “It is an issue about the relationship between coach and players. We have seen the information and decided the conduct was not what we want from an FA employee.”

Sampson had been pursued by accusations of racism and bullying all summer but his dismissal was not directly connected to those incidents. It came about after an anonymous tip-off last week from someone outside the organisation prompted the FA to re-examine the details in the safeguarding report into Sampson. On Tuesday night he led England to an 6-0 World Cup qualifying win over Russia, but on Wednesday afternoon he was telephoned to be told he had been dismissed.

Sampson left Bristol Academy for the England job in December 2013 but it was in 2014 when the FA was made aware of the allegations concerning his inappropriate relationships. In March 2015 a safe-guarding panel cleared Sampson to continue to be a “participant in football” and sent him on a development and mentoring programme to emphasise the appropriate boundaries between coach and player. FA chairman Gregg Clarke said of the allegations against Sampson that “some could be categorised as trivial, some as very serious, none as criminal.”

In October 2015 Glenn learned that Sampson had been cleared by the safeguarding report earlier that year. But he did not ask for full details out of respect for the confidentiality of those involved, a decision he admitted on Wednesday afternoon that he regrets. “I guess my mistake was that I took at face value the details of the case were confidential,” Glenn said. “If I had known then what I know now I would have probed further.”

But last week the FA head of HR and head of legal were advised by external sources to re-examine the initial report made for the safeguarding panel. Glenn read it late last Wednesday, showed it to Clarke and they decided last weekend that it means Sampson must be dismissed. Over they weekend they showed it to the FA board and they reached a decision on Monday.

“The full report of that investigation was only made known to me at the end of last week,” Glenn said this afternoon. “On reading it I immediately shared it with Greg and we were both deeply concerned with the contents of the report. Mark had overstepped the professional boundaries between player and coach. When I first read the report I absorbed it and took Greg through it and we both agreed that Mark’s position was untenable and we shared it with the board over the weekend.”

Glenn did not criticise the safeguarding process but said that ideally the findings of the report would have been used to make a more “holistic” decision about Sampson’s suitability to work. Glenn does not think Sampson’s conduct was appropriate for a man in a coaching role.

“We judge it is not right for any FA employee with having conduct like that behind them,” Glenn said. “The safeguarding work was appropriate but we think the failing in our particular case the organisation’s ability to balance the critical need for total confidentiality on safeguarding case – because if you didn’t have confidentiality people wouldn’t raise it – with the judgement about how much of that information should be shared on more holistic decisions about general conduct.”

Sports minister Tracey Crouch said on Wednesday night that the FA must make sure it does not happen again: “This situation is a mess and raises very serious questions about whether the historic process that the FA had in place around the recruitment of coaches were appropriate, for something like this to have been missed.”