England Women

Trevor Brooking: Mark Sampson "interviewed fine"

By Neil Wilkes, Editor-in-chief | 21 September 2017

The FA's former director of football development, Sir Trevor Brooking, says that he was unaware of any cause for concern when he hired Mark Sampson in 2013.

The FA's former director of football development, Sir Trevor Brooking, has said that he was unaware of any past misdemeanours before Mark Sampson was given the England Women job in 2013.

Sampson, 34, was sacked as manager of the Lionesses yesterday after evidence came to light of his "inappropriate and unacceptable behaviour" in a previous job at Bristol Academy.

The FA is under fire after clearing Sampson of any wrongdoing in a previous investigation in which former England striker Eni Aluko had accused him of directing racist comments towards her and teammate Drew Spence.

In recent weeks Spence has come forward to corroborate Aluko's version of events and criticised the investigations that cleared Sampson for not seeing fit to interview her about the accusations.

Brooking, who retired from the FA in June 2014, was part of Sampson's interview process but insists that he had no cause for concern at the time.

"I was there and he interviewed fine," he told The Times, "but it would have been the HR people that looked into all the background stuff. Certainly nothing surfaced at that stage that I was aware of."

Current FA chief executive Martin Glenn has said that he had sacked Sampson after becoming concerned by the "insufficient boundaries between that of a coach and player".