Boy’s club

• The CBI is in merger talks with Make UK months after a sexual misconduct scandal rocked the lobby group.
• Smurfit Kappa, the £9 billion paper and packaging producer, is poised to cancel its London listing.
• The Scottish government is piloting a four-day working week for civil servants.

Manchester United is under pressure to drop Antony dos Santos, its £84 million forward, after he was withdrawn from the Brazil squad following allegations of assault made by his former girlfriend. The accusations, which Antony denies, emerged a fortnight after Mason Greenwood left the club following a scandal in which rape charges against him were dropped.

So what? The handling of these cases raises serious questions about whether Premier League club boards 

• grasp the seriousness of what is beginning to look like an epidemic of sexual misconduct in top flight football;
• are responding adequately on behalf of victims; or
• understand the reputational risks they run by not doing enough.

A drawn-out internal investigation into Greenwood, followed by a cack-handed decision to consult Man United’s female team at the last minute, has highlighted a flawed system that forces clubs to balance the interests of supporters, sponsors and shareholders against those of potential victims. 

A league of their own. EPL boards boast plenty of expertise from the wider business world, where frameworks for dealing with employee misconduct are well-established. Independent directors who sit on the board of Man United include senior employees of LM Rothschild and Mckinsey. Legal, investment and entertainment talent runs deep across the league, with directors from Forsters LLP, JPMorgan, Bain & Company and Sony to name a few.

But they have a blindspot. A Tortoise analysis of the EPL’s club directory and club websites found that:

• Only 9 per cent of club board directors in the EPL are women. 

• Half of EPL clubs have zero female board representation.
• 15 men named David or John have a seat on an EPL board, compared with 14 women in all.

“Sport is in a transition period where behavioural misconduct and mitigating against reputational risk is an increasing focus, but there is work to do,” says Charli Curran, senior director at Ankura, a sports advisory firm. “Whilst diversity in boardrooms is improving, it lags behind other sectors and there are few club directors that would have the right skills and background to navigate the complexities of these issues without external expertise.”

A MeToo moment? Not yet – although the strength of reaction to Luis Rubiales’ claim to be the subject of a “witch hunt” certainly indicates that much is changing. Ever since the boss of the Spanish football federation grabbed Jenni Hermoso and kissed her on the lips, Spanish women have taken to the streets bearing placards reading “Se Acabó” – “it’s over”.

One EPL director says this isn’t about failing to recognise that misconduct happens, since most clubs have safeguarding and policies to deal with misconduct at lower levels. It’s when these issues affect a multimillion-pound player/asset that it gets messy. 

“I’m sure that every Premier League club is looking at what happened with Greenwood and Antony and thinking ‘we’d better have a system in place for dealing with this type of problem, because it’s not altogether impossible it will come to us’,” this director says.

Regulation. In other countries, player misconduct is a league rather than a club issue. The NFL, for example, has strict protocols governing violations of its personal conduct policy. But league-level interventions in the UK have been light touch: a Tortoise investigation found only half of Premier League first teams are prepared to confirm they conducted mandatory sexual consent training required of them last year.

The former CEO of a Premier League club says one problem in European football is the “alphabet soup” of regulatory bodies and governance. In England, the Premier League represents the 20 top clubs but the Football Association supervises the other leagues, international football and on-pitch discipline. The former executive points out that the EPL’s historic role has been as a “broadcast collective” that sells rights, rather than a regulator that handles issues of reputational risk. There’s an argument that needs to change.

Change how? Football has become undeniably healthier through the inclusion of women as fans, players and staff. Next step: the boardroom.