It’s over. Sam Allardyce’s England career has to be over now, surely.
British newspaper The Telegraph effectively shocked the entire world by publishing an expose article last night, as they revealed Sam Allardyce’s attempt of negotiating a deal revolving around third party ownership with a ‘Far East consortium’.
As part of a 10-month long investigation to uncover corruption in British football, several journalists from The Telegraph went undercover and posed as businessmen from the Far East and they were able to record footages of Big Sam, as he is fondly known, attempting to forge the deal, even before he held his inaugural England training session.
He explained how there were ways to beat the FA’s rules on the third-party owning of players, and even agreed to travel to Singapore and Hong Kong as an ambassador for the company. “You can still get around it. I mean obviously the big money’s here,” he told the ‘businessmen’. But that’s just a small portion of it.
What is ‘third party ownership’? As succintly explained by The Telegraph: “Third party ownership involves an agent or an investor owning part of the financial rights to a player, meaning transfer fees are partly paid to them when a player moves clubs, rather than the buying club paying all the money to the selling club.
When the ‘businessmen’ expressed their concerns on the legal side of the matter, Allardyce attempted to ease the situation by explaining that West Ham – his previous club – had acquired Enner Valencia from a third party owner in 2014. “It’s not a problem… we got Valencia in. He was third party owned when we bought him from Mexico,” the 61 year-old said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcBwp8WOVlI
Allardyce, who earns approximately £3 million a year as England’s boss, also poked fun at his predecessor Roy Hodgson, claiming ‘Woy’ doesn’t have the personality for public speaking. He also went on to say English players didn’t have the ‘mental strength’ to cope with pressure in international football. In fact, he also thought Gary Neville – Hodgson’s assistant – was “the wrong influence” and should have been told to “sit down and shut up”.
According to Telegraph, they’ve sent a breakdown of the investigation to The FA, though a spokesperson said they won’t be answering any questions till they conduct a full review on transcripts of the entire discussion.
Here’s a full list of everything Big Sam said, as reported by The Telegraph.
On why Roy Hodgson, former England manager, would not be a good public speaker:
“He’d send them all to sleep, Roy. Woy. He hasn’t got the personality for it.”
On where Roy Hodgson went wrong as England manager:
“Players let him down in the end. I think maybe he, he was too indecisive. Cast a bit of an anxiety over to the players maybe. I mean prior to the Iceland game, he won all 10 qualifiers. We’d drawn with Russia, we should have won. We beat Wales, and that was our worst performance. We drew with Slovakia, and we only had to draw with Iceland to get through … he just collapsed.”
On Gary Neville, former assistant manager England manager, advising Hodgson on the decision to substitute on Marcus Rashford during the match against Iceland in the Euros:
“They were arguing for 10 minutes about bringing him on, him and Gary Neville. So Gary was the wrong influence for him. —-ing tell Gary to sit down and shut up, so you can do what you want. You’re the manager, you do what you want, not what they anyone else”
On the chances of footballers playing for England:
“Can’t play them then. Joe Hart. Jack Wilshere, on the bench for Arsenal. Oxlade-Chamberlain on the bench. You can play them, but they’re not playing for the club. When they’re not playing for the club, they’re just short of match practice.”
On Wembley Stadium:
“They [the FA] stupidly spent £870 million on Wembley, so they’re still paying that debt off. They completely rebuilt it. If they’d built it anywhere else, it would have cost about £400 million. They completely floored it and then rebuilt the new stadium which is fabulous, but that sort of debt is not really what you want. Most of the money the FA make[s] will go to the interest on the debt.”
On the gambling habits of current or former senior England players:
“[A club owner] bailed [a player] out twice. That’s players for you, dealing with the boredom, see. It were worse in our time … we gambled more in our time than they do now. We played cards, played cards all the way back [from away matches] … you’d do your wages in.”
On the Football Association:
“They’re all about making money aren’t they? You know the FA’s the richest football association in the world? Well, I shouldn’t say that. They’re not the richest at all. What they do is they have the biggest turnover in the world with £325 million.”
On the Duke of Cambridge failing to appear at the launch of the Euro 2020 football tournament:
“The only one that never turned up was Prince William. He’s our ambassador for the Football Association, so it would have been nice if he’d have turned up but he obviously had more, much busier things on.”
On Prince Harry:
“Harry’s a naughty boy. He’s a very naughty boy, very naughty. He shows his bottom and all sorts.”
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