August 25 – Two weeks after being nominated for the position, Greg Clarke has formally taken over as the new chairman of the English Football Association in succession to the outspoken and often controversial Greg Dyke who has stepped down after three years.
Clarke, who starts his new job on September 2, will step up from the same role he successfully occupied at the Football League, his key challenge being to pull together the various factions of English football as well as building bridges with FIFA.
Clarke’s appointment was endorsed at a full FA Council meeting yesterday and the former Leicester City chairman will begin his duties two days before England start their 2018 World Cup qualifying campaign against Slovakia under new manager Sam Allardyce.
“My job is to oil the machine, to make sure the stakeholders agree a common agenda and then strive to achieve that,” said Clarke.
“My view of the football is we leave it to football people. Sam [Allardyce] will pick the team and set the objectives and get my support. I wasn’t part of the selection panel that selected him but if I had been picking the England manager, it would have been an Englishman and it would have been Sam Allardyce.”
Clarke has huge experience in business and while he was at the Football League tried to make it more commercially viable.
The 58-year-old has been quick to point out he will adopt a different style to Dyke, who ruffled more than a few feathers with his straightforward, often off-the-cuff approach to football politics.
“In my view he was a very good chairman of the FA. But I’m a different sort of chairman,” Clarke told Sky. “I’m the sort of chairman who listens a lot, who builds a consensus and then takes responsibility for delivering that.”
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