The big talking point for my blog this month can only be one thing: Sam Allardyce's remarkable reign and manager of the England football team. Why was it remarkable, I hear you ask (or not, as it was pretty big news). Well, for one thing, he left the job with a 100% win record, which is a feat that nobody else has matched before. He's also the left with the record for shortest term for a permanent manager: 67 days (1 game). That one game was the sort of comatose inducing performance that drives people away from football and his comments to the press afterwards would be funny if they weren't so depressing. After Wayne Rooney, his captain, spent the entire game puffing away in every area of the pitch other than the area he was supposed to be in, Sam Allardyce announced that Rooney has more experience than him in international football, so it's not for Sam to tell him where to play. The thing is, that is exactly what the England manager is supposed to be doing. If the manager can't tell the players where to play, what good is he? Obviously that sort of cowardice and level of incompetence was enough for Big Sam to lose his job... except that's not why he's gone. The reasons he's been sacked (and is a sacking despite claims of mutual consent) is even more depressing, on multiple levels.
You see, Big Sam apparently had his greedy nose in the money trough and his integrity was for sale... except it wasn't really. The Daily Telegraph, a once well respected broadsheet newspaper, decided to run a long term sting operation to expose corruption in English football. They caught a few assistant managers and people who used to have some connection with the Premier League taking bribes or advising fake Asian businessmen on how to make profits on football transfers as a third party group (which has been banned for a few years). A few bungs were thrown around or discussed, but none of it is really eye catching stuff. They needed a big coup to sell the story and they found the perfect patsy in the new England manager, Sam Allardyce. The thing about Sam is that he likes to brag and hold court and he's got a bit of a history for allegations of dodgy dealings. He also appears to be a bit gullible, judging by the tax scams he's been caught up in. Basically, he was the perfect mark and fell nicely into the laps of the Telegraph's entrapment... I mean investigation.
What the once respected broadsheet newspaper did was decide to throw away any notion of fair play or journalistic integrity and play in the muck where the red tops find their filth to fling. The paper contacted one of Allardyce's agents/mates and set up a couple of meetings with the fake businessmen. During the meetings, the "journalists" got Sam nice and drunk and asked him a bunch of leading questions. Sam said a great number of stupid and embarrassing things, but he got through the meetings without committing and crimes or doing anything particularly dodgy, really. There wasn't much of a scandal, unless you push two unrelated topics together and imply that they were related. During the meetings, Big Sam discussed how people get around the 3rd party ownership rules (3rd party ownership of players is banned) and he negotiated a £400,000 speaking engagement with the fake company. The speaking engagement looks greedy and a potential conflict of interest with his £3 million a year job as England manager, but he did stipulate that he would have to run the job past the powers that be before committing to it. The contract looks like corruption if you stick the revelation next to the discussion about getting around FA rules, as the Telegraph did. They sold the story as England manager for sale and implied that he had agreed a deal to speak to a foreign investment company about how to get around the rules in exchange for a load of money... which was bollocks.
Did Sam do anything wrong and did he deserve to go? Well, he was stupid, said some nasty things and made himself look like a right prat, but he avoided conversations that actually would constitute corruption and didn't accept any bribes. Technically, he didn't do anything wrong but he brought the integrity of the England team down into the gutter as he used his position to scratch around for more money, and he was stupid enough to fall for the honey trap set up by the newspaper. I think, on balance, he deserved to go but he should never have been placed into the position in the first place. He didn't seek out these businessmen, the newspaper sought him out in order to stir up a scandal and sell papers. I think they succeeded on both fronts and they will be patting themselves on the backs. In truth, they should be ashamed of themselves as they've just cost a man his dream job and sold their souls for a few clicks and a short bump in sales. Nobody will ever look at that paper in the same way again, and that's a real shame because it used to be one of the good ones.
