- EXCLUSIVE: The
FA says it will replace its former chairmanGreg Clarke with someone who has more modern attitudes to diversity and inclusivity. - Clarke resigned in November after making offensive remarks about both Black and gay players.
- "There are all sorts of checks and balances that we're putting in place to make sure that we find the right person," FA CIO Craig Donald told Insider.
The Football Association says it will replace its disgraced former chairman Greg Clarke with someone who has more modern attitudes to diversity and inclusivity.
Clarke resigned from his role in November after making offensive remarks about both Black and gay players during an FA hearing about racist abuse online.
The 63-year-old described Black players as "colored" and described being gay as a "life choice."
Speaking with Insider, Craig Donald, the FA's Chief Information Officer and its most senior gay male employee, described Clarke's comments as a low point for the organization.
"It was a depressing week, frankly," he said in an exclusive interview with Insider.
"We had a whole bunch of people saying, 'What the hell is this? Is this who you really are.' And the fact is that I know that's not who we are. And that's what was most disappointing.
"You can almost feel the clock being wound back when you when you see those words, and it was just soul destroying."
On finding a suitable replacement for Clarke, Donald said: "We will still be recruiting a chairman based on merits. And that has to always be the guiding factor in this.
"However, part of determining whether that person has merit or not, is exploring their attitudes to diversity and inclusivity, and how we improve participation from the Black Asian Ethnic Minority (BAME) community, as well as from the LGBT+ community. So it's embedded in the recruitment process."
In December, the FA announced it had put together a seven-member selection panel to help find and appoint a replacement for Clarke.
Headed by Kate Tinsley, an Independent Non-Executive Director for the FA, the panel includes the FA's interim chair, Peter McCormick, its Director of the Board, Rupinder Bains, and the former
The panel will be following guidance from the FA's recently launched Football Leadership Diversity Code, which aims to move away from recruitment practices focused on personal networks, to identify Clarke's successor.
"There are all sorts of checks and balances that we're putting in place to make sure that we find the right person and that the characteristics of that right person include the right attitude towards those things," added Donald.
"How you identify that is usually through conversations, isn't it? It's through having, you know, blunt conversations, as well as looking at previous history and actions. I think we'll find the right person."
Donald says Clarke's comments are not indicative of a wider problem within the FA
Stonewall FC are the UK's first and most successful ever gay men's football club.
Alexander Baker, the club's chairman, told Insider in December that he believed Clarke's comments showed that attitudes to inclusivity hadn't "sufficiently taken root at a senior level" within the FA.
"You do need people who don't just think it's important to do this because otherwise their job will be on the line, they've got to believe it," he said. "You need people who understand and believe it at a senior level."
Donald told Insider that while he understands Baker's comments, he rejects the idea that Clarke's comments represented the senior FA as a whole.
"You've got to you've got to find a way to detach the words of one person from the attitude of the organization," Donald said. "Now that becomes really difficult when the one person saying those words is at the head of that organization.
"And so I understand why Alex is challenging whether or not we are an organization that's committed to that diversity. But honestly, the words that I saw from Greg on that particular occasion are not what I see within the FA."
"I believe that we have a diverse organization at the top," Donald added. "There is always work to be done with other parts of our organization, you need to continue to evolve.
"But if I look at the board, or senior leadership teams, there's diversity across the board."
The FA Board consists of 10 members, six of whom are men and four of whom are women. Only one is from an ethnic minority while none identify as LGBT+.
The FA's Management Team, of which Donald is a member, consists of 13 members of staff, six of whom are men and seven of which are women. Again, only one member is from an ethnic minority.
"We're doing okay, we're not doing perfectly," Donald said. "We're doing better than some of our some of our colleagues in other industries.
"We've still got work to do. But I don't believe that what we saw from Greg indicates anything is systemic through the organization. I mean, if anything, I think it was entirely the opposite."