By Matt Scott
June 19 – Nic Coward (pictured), the general secretary of the Premier League, is to step down in August following a senior-management reorganisation.
Coward, who ran the Premier League’s football operations ranging from the international relations, legal, regulatory and youth-development departments moves on after five years as general secretary.
With Coward having developed the core of his responsibilities to maturity, his work can now be subsumed into an expanded executive chairman’s role for the long-serving chief executive, Richard Scudamore.
Scudamore, assisted by the League’s head of international broadcasting and media, Paul Molnar, will retain overall responsibility for its rights negotiations with UK and international licensees. But he will now take an overarching role across the whole business, including the football operations.
Coward, a former legal director of the Football Association and chief executive of the British Horseracing Authority, was already close to Scudamore prior to his arrival at the Premier League and sources credibly describe his departure as being on entirely amicable terms.
The highly regarded Coward has not yet divulged what his future plans hold. But as with so many Premier League executives, he has a strong record to trade on.
During his time at the Premier League Coward successfully oversaw the development and implementation of the Elite Player Performance Plan, which regulates youth development across the English leagues. That has now bedded in, with England’s Under-17s winning their second European Championships title in five years in 2014.
Coward will also vacate his position on the Football Association board. It is expected, though not guaranteed, that Scudamore will also take up this post in a reflection of his burgeoning relationship with the new FA chief executive, Martin Glenn.
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