Fishburn Hedges

01.06.2010

The FA has had a tough couple of weeks. Lord Treisman stands down for comments made about rival bidders for the World Cup in 2018 – see Paul Raeburn’s analysis of the impact here. Fabio Capello is courted by Inter Milan following the departure of the Special One. Even the England team itself appears to be spluttering its way to the finals in South Africa. Surely, surely the FA could redeem itself by cordially announcing the 23 brave souls who had been chosen to wear the Three Lions during this summer’s tournament.

The thinking was simple, let’s not repeat the same communications mistakes we made in 2006. That summer, the FA had gone all Hollywood by staging a dramatic press conference where the biggest twist involved a 16-year-old Theo Walcott being selected. The campaign bombed, England went home, the FA trudged on.

This time round, come lunchtime on 1^st June, there was simply going to be a statement posted on FA website and briefings would be offered behind closed doors. Fine, seems professional enough.

1pm comes and goes, and at 1:05pm the FA’s website has crashed and there is still no word from the FA. What ensues is pure chaos as people speculate about who is in and who is out. A particular problem for the FA is that sports journalists have become very early adopters of Twitter and seemingly they have more direct routes to the players than the FA itself. A ginormous game of Chinese whispers begins.

To put this into perspective, this is the biggest announcement the FA will make all year, possibly the biggest for four years. The hitch in the announcement this afternoon would be akin to a FTSE 100 company delaying the announcement of its results to the stock exchange and then telling analysts the CEO has been caught in traffic.

Leading the criticism of the FA are: Oliver Kay (Times), Nick Szczepanik (Times) Matt Law (Express) Henry Winter (Telegraph), Jeremy Wilson (Telegraph) and Phil McNulty (BBC). Each have the inside track on who has made it and are happy to break the news via their Twitter feeds. Each also provide a scathing view on how the FA has handled the announcement.

At a time when the FA’s competence is (again) being questioned, such a simple announcement hardly bodes well for when they search, recruit and announce yet another new chief executive.

As a side note, the sports company Nike can’t have been too happy with the exclusion of Theo Walcott either. Despite being a brilliant TV spot, the Nike “Write the Future” campaign now features two players who aren’t even going to the World Cup…

Posted by James Gilheany