FA’s Greg Clarke under further pressure after John Amaechi’s equality claims
• Clarke allegedly said he would not risk ‘getting strawberry floating fired for equality’
• Amaechi is one of Britain’s highest-profile openly gay sportsmen
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Now Amaechi, a former NBA player who came out in 2007 in the United States, says Clarke displayed an arrogance and lack of appetite for real action to combat homophobia in football.
“His office reached out to talk to me,” said Amaechi. “I was surprised to be asked because I’m persona non grata among many sporting organisations.
“He walked in and explained what he was doing and said he was trying to move things forward. I said what he was saying they were going to do wasn’t going to work and then we got into an intellectual pissing contest where he told me about his multiple degrees and how he was on the board of many different high-powered organisations and he knows better.
“I mentioned to him that I thought the FA had the power to do a lot more than they currently do to address the problems. At which point Greg described the ‘crustiness’ of the FA council and the existence of a bunch of octogenarians who weren’t going to tolerate radical change.
“I said: ‘Part of the job of organisations which speak so strongly to British culture as football was to lead not follow, to set an example.’ I said it was about time he did something radical to which he said: ‘I’m not going to do something radical. That’s what got the last guy fired. I’m not getting strawberry floating fired for equality.’”
The previous chairman of the FA, Greg Dyke, stood down in June last year after facing opposition to long-overdue reform at the governing body.
“If it’s true that the last person got fired for trying to bring around change too quickly then it’s a sad indictment of the sport,” Amaechi said. Amaechi claims Clarke also later said the government would be powerless to affect any change. “They won’t do a strawberry floating thing, we have all the power,” is what Amaechi alleged was said by Clarke.
A spokesperson for the FA said: “Homophobia in football is an important subject and one that the Chairman feels passionately about. He had a private meeting with John Amaechi in March to discuss potential ways how he and The FA can work most effectively in the field of LGBT inclusion. They had a strong, healthy and robust debate and the chairman valued John’s personal insight and suggestions.”
https://www.theguardian.com/football/20 ... ity-claims