It’s hilarious that five white men who used to run the FA have taken aim at the ‘elderly white men’ who still run it

Whether it’s tiki-taka or the gegenpress the pundits argue over, there is certainly tactical sophistication in this attack on the Football Association.

Five white men, some elderly, some merely middle-aged, who used to run the FA but failed to reform it, have taken aim at the “elderly white men” still at English football’s governing body, who they say make reform difficult. They’ve written a joint letter to Parliament’s Culture Media and Sport Select Committee and told them actual government legislation is needed to reform the FA.

The chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, Damian Collins, has already replied, and said such legislation is being prepared. But will the Government support it? Well guess who’s appearing before said committee tomorrow? That’s right, sports minister Tracey Crouch, who will suddenly find herself with a load of carefully pre-cooked questions to answer. One – nil.

The question of FA reform has hung over football for decades, and even dedicated football fans could be forgiven for not understanding it. What does it actually mean? That the England men’s football team continues to underwhelm so spectacularly is among its chief deficiencies. That the untold riches of the Premier League are not better spread out to the lower and younger reaches of the game is another.

But mapping the path of causation – correctly apportioning blame – is not straightforward. England still produces plenty of high-calibre footballers. Until the precise moment Wayne Rooney broke a bone in his foot in Euro 2004, England were by some margin the best team in the tournament. When Manchester United played Chelsea in 2008, no fewer than ten Englishmen, yes ten, started the Champions League final, before going home to watch Euro 2008, a tournament for which they had failed to qualify, on television. Of course, it was the FA blazerati who had given their man, Steve McClaren, the manager’s job, but even so, the blame for that particular failure deserves far wider circulation. It is also not their fault that in 2011, England’s then captain John Terry shouted the words “fucking black c**t” in the direction of Anton Ferdinand, the brother of his longstanding central defensive partner, the fallout from which cost England another manager, Fabio Capello. Despite Terry being cleared of the alleged offence in court, the FA charged the player with using abusive and insulting words. Sporting success, we are now all constantly told, is a matter of marginal gains. Such major setbacks are beyond the realm of anyone, elderly white men or not, to control. Golden generations of players come and go. England had one that didn’t deliver. Belgium currently has one, which shows every outward sign of doing the same.

Now, the complaint is that the prevalence of foreign players in the all-powerful Premier League is causing a “blockage”. That there are no opportunities for young English players. Greg Dyke, one of the signatories of this most recent letter, had a plan for this, the notorious B team league. It was laughed out. This is not a uniquely English problem. Take Hector Bellerin, Arsenal’s 21-year-old right back. As a teenager, he knew he was not going to get the chance he needed at Barcelona. He was too low down the pecking order. So he left home for London, dislodged more established players considered ahead of him, and is now considered the best in his position in the whole league and won his first international caps earlier this year. That English players are simply not prepared to do this – to take a gamble, to take a pay cut too – is not the FA’s fault.

Naturally, the root of the problem is money. With hindsight, the FA was devastatingly outplayed in 1992, when the big clubs broke away to form the Premier League, and keep the big bucks to themselves. The Football Association wants a slice of this now supersized pie, to ensure it is more equitably spent for the good of the game, but it has done little to contribute to it. It is not the FA’s work over two decades that has established the Premier League as the world’s most-watched football league (even when almost none of the game’s very brightest stars compete in it).

It is very disappointing that this colossal wealth is not spent on, for example, more 3G pitches, more and better paid coaches, a more professionalised system right down the pyramid, and down to youth level. But the FA is naturally resistant to change, and there is almost nothing to which it will show greater resistance than the collective, public action of five of its former own telling it to do what they themselves failed to do.