Plans to rebrand the Football Association by changing its name to the ‘English FA’ have been shelved, Sportsmail can reveal.
It emerged earlier this month that an attempt by chairman Greg Clarke and outgoing chief executive Martin Glenn to make such a change for the first time in the governing body’s 155-year history had been met with resistance by certain members of the FA board.
Now Glenn and Clarke have opted to put the plan on hold and leave it for incoming chief executive Mark Bullingham to decide if it is a cause he wants to champion when he takes charge at the start of next season.
Glenn once described the FA name as the ‘ultimate expression of arrogance’. He was keen to modernise the organisation with a view to enhancing England’s chances of securing the rights to host the 2030 World Cup.
Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin said he had no issue with the FA name, but many countries agree with Glenn’s view.
Having also been defeated in his bid to sell Wembley last year to raise revenue for grass-roots football, Glenn hoped the rebranding would be one initiative he could push through without too many problems prior to his departure.
Instead, he will leave having endured the same difficulties so many of his predecessors encountered at the FA when trying to do anything even remotely radical. The traditionalists appear to have won this battle, at least for now.
It remains to be seen whether Bullingham will challenge the board on this issue. He joined the FA in 2016 as commercial and marketing director before becoming chief commercial and football development officer.
