FSOM: Greg Dyke vs the Premier League… Good luck!

Once upon a time, Fifty Shades’ boss was Greg Dyke.

Back in the day when Fifty Shades earned the monthly envelope by toiling at the BBC, Dyke was his head honcho.

To be fair to Dyke, he probably didn’t know he was Fifty Shades’ boss, but as then Director of the BBC, he was, whether he liked it or not.

It’s a bit different being the boss of a corner newsagents or a small factory putting the heads on hammers, than being the top dog of a corporation that employs 30,000 people.

The shoppy or hammer assembly factory’s boss is likely to know his employees by first names, as opposed to the DG of the Beeb, to whom every staff member is just a number on several large sheets of paper, apart the people who bring his early morning latte, and those jostling to be first in line to lick his shoes, face, backside or any other part of anatomy they think will help them climb the greasy pole (Fifty Shades worked with quite a few of them at Television Centre, believe me).

But on the occasions he did sweep down from on high like Moses with the stone tablets, to tour the shop floor, he always gave the impression he knew you intimately.

Granted, he tended to pop into BBC Sport more often than other departments because a) he is a sports fan and liked to chew the fat about sport and b) our fifth floor base was only one below his den.

When he chatted, he made staff feel he knew their kids’ birthdays, how the wife’s boob job had gone, what colour carpet they had decided on in the lounge.

This was reinforced several years after both Fifty Shades and Greg Dyke had left the BBC a poorer organisation by parting company, when he was presided over a graduation ceremony at York University where he was vice-chancellor and Fifty Shades was there to see his son – aka, The Young Smartarse – snatch his degree certificate out of Dyke’s hand.

Plainly, as a public figure, Dyke was quite a popular target for proud mums and dads wanting their offsprings’ picture taken with him.

He was patience personified as he posed in his resplendent gold embossed gown and mortar board with giggly undergrads, a venerable Dumbledore to their Ron Weasleys’.

Fifty Shades sidled over to Dyke and approached him with the same weak-kneed, stomach-churning nervousness he showed when asking Millie Olde for a dance many years ago.

His opening line to Dyke was just as crass and cumbersome as his one to the lovely Millie; “I used to work for you,” blurted Fifty Shades.

After his initial shock, which resembled being touched for a Lady Godiva by a tramp smelling of wee, Dyke accepted the explanation.

He gave Fifty Shades a full five minutes of his time, shooing away camera-toting mums in big hats while devoting his rapt and undivided attention to a former fellow BBC man.

The conversation was small-talk smaller than an ant’s earflaps, but that wasn’t important. Dyke gave ear-time to a former colleague (Fifty Shades thinks he can call Greg a former colleague).

In doing so, the Chairman of the FA underlined what he confirmed he is last week – a Man of the People.

And as such, when he says something, it’s a good idea to shut up, sit up, and listen to what he has to say.

While on that subject, it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to listen to Russian president Vladimir Putin either.

While Dyke’s demands that England win the World Cup in 2022 might be a bit pie in the sky, he was pretty much spot on in other areas he outlined where England is lacking behind other countries.

Dyke’s problem is that he heads the organisation that is supposed to oversee and administer football in this country, but it doesn’t really run the show.

The Premier League has all the clout, thanks to the financial big stick it carries.

The FA can threaten and bluster all it likes over the weakening of the national team as English players become as rare in the Premier League as rocking horse droppings, clubs continue to sign foreign players instead of nurturing and developing young English talent, and take Statue of Liberty sized liberties when it comes to releasing players for international duty.

But the FA also knows there is a lurking danger that if they annoy the Premier League too much, they will simply hive off and do their own thing.

How does the FA know that? Because the FA encouraged First Division clubs to do exactly that in 1991 when they broke away from the Football League to form the FA Premier League.

And who was the TV executive who first met with the Big Five clubs in 1990 to set the wheels of withdrawal in motion?

Step forward Mr Greg Dyke. So it could be argued that he sowed the seed for his own fate. Or to put it another way, he constructed the bomb that is now ticking away underneath him and the FA.

In many ways, the FA and Dyke are like a small boy whose dad has won the lottery and bought him a barn full of his favourite toys. Except that he can’t play with his favourite train set as big boys have elbowed him out of the way, and all he can do is watch as the trains whizz round the tiny track.

But there are things the FA can do to improve the chances of fielding a team that could threaten to get somewhere near winning a major trophy before Fifty Shades turns his toes up.

And one of those is to improve possibly the scariest stat Fifty Shades has seen in sport.

Questions as to why we don’t produce good young players, or bring through the promising ones, could be directly related to the number of top grade coaches in this country.

Consider this; Germany has 5,500 UEFA A-grade coaches, Spain has 12,720. England has 1,161.

At Pro Licence level (the highest) Spain has 2,140 coaches, Germany more than a thousand. England has 203.

As a country, Spain hasn’t got two pesetas to scratch its culo with. A quarter of its young people between 18-25 are out of work. Its banks are going boobies-up. Yet they can still find the will and financial wherewithal to provide ten times more top grade coaches than England can.

This is an area where the FA can have a direct influence, by improving the number of top-grade coaches. It’s not as if the FA are short of money, and the Premier League are displaying all the warm-hearted generosity of Scrooge McDuck by loudly announcing it is increasing the amount of money it is pumping into grass roots football, even if it is a reduction in real terms.

So what’s Vladimir Putin got to do with all this?

Well, the world’s favourite naked wrestling state leader caused PM David Cameron to flush a deeper shade of crimson than the old Hammer and Sickle flag when he described Britain as; “A little island off the coast of Europe which nobody takes any notice of.”

Cameron did his best impersonation of Lord Snooty threatening to transfer from The Beano to The Dandy in indignation, but Putin was not far off the truth.

And in the week when England slumped to 17th place in the FIFA rankings – its lowest for 12 years – Vlad the Impaler also summed up our national football team.

The five teams immediately above England in the rankings are (in ascending order) Chile (16th), Russia, Switzerland, USA and Greece (13th).

Even the Septic Tanks – many of whom still can’t get their heads around ‘soccerball’ – are looking down on us, while the likes of Italy, Germany, Argentina and Spain are so far away, they might as well be on board the Voyager space probe.

Herein, though, lies the heart of our problem. We think we are still a major world force in football.

We have an arrogance that because we invented the game and gave it to the world, we feel we have the sort of Divine Right that got Charles I’s head separated from his shoulders, to be among football’s rulers.

The Chinese invented paper and printing but you don’t see their books all over Waterstones.

We might have the world’s most-watched football league, but it’s not the best in terms of producing European Champions.

We do suffer from delusions of grandeur and it’s hard to take when Johnny Foreigner points out that Queen Victoria is no longer on the throne and we don’t have an empire on which the sun never sets.

Fifty Shades would like to wish his old boss all the very best in his desire to get England back to the top of world football. That’s of course, if the Premier League let him play with the train set now and again.

If not, perhaps Greg Dyke could call on his old mate Vladimir Putin to grapple with the Premier League’s head honcho and put the reducer on him.

Putin v Scudamore. Fifty Shades would pay money to see that. And Sky would certainly televise it.

By John May

Follow @maisy68

This photograph was provided by Super MF.