Taking Money From Strangers

Interviewed after his one and only game as England manager, Sam Allardyce related an anecdote about a stranger giving him a 'lucky' coin at the team hotel prior to the match, so it is perhaps fitting that it was taking money from strangers, or at least agreeing to do so, that brought an end to his sixty-seven day, one match, reign.

It isn't the first time that Allardyce has been on the receiving end of allegations of impropriety. In 2006, Allardyce and his son Craig - who is a football agent - were alleged to have taken bribes from agents for signing players. Allardyce senior denies ever taking, or asking for, money, but it may be with those allegations in mind that The Daily Telegraph newspaper included him in an investigation into bribery and corruption in British football that has been ongoing for ten months.

The facts of the story are simply that Allardyce met with men posing as representatives of a Far East company and agreed to travel to Singapore and Hong Kong to give talks on how Football Association rules that prohibit third party ownership of footballers could be circumvented. In return, Allardyce was told that he would receive around £400,000 although as we know, he would never have received such a payment because he would not have had the opportunity to earn that money; the deal was completely bogus. Which begs the question, has Allardyce done anything wrong? Without doubt he has been caught out making a complete error of judgement; he said so himself: "It was an error of judgement...I sort of helped out someone I've known for 30 years," but is an error of judgement like this an offence for which someone can lose their job? In a way, yes inasmuch as although no actual offence has been completed - he did not take any money, he did not give advice on getting round FA regulations - he did in principle agree to commit an offence, which in law is known as an inchoate offence, that is an act that is anticipating or preparatory to a further criminal act. In that respect, were they offences in law rather than breaches of Football Association rules, The Daily Telegraph journalists were, to my mind, on shaky ground in that they were in fact inciting Allardyce to commit an offence.

Adam Lallana scores the only goal of Sam Allardyce's reign. Remember that, it will come up in quizzes before too long.

All of this is beside the point, since Allardyce's contract with the FA was terminated by mutual consent - you have to love that expression, I have no doubt it was more a question of Allardyce agreeing to jump before he was pushed - because his conduct was deemed 'inappropriate' and there can be no doubt that it agreeing in principle to commit an offence is inappropriate in anyone's book. But in some ways, this was almost a sideshow when compared with Allardyce's criticisms of his predecessor, Roy Hodgson, of Gary Neville, and of the redevelopment of Wembley Stadium. The FA's coverall charge 'bringing the game into disrepute' could just have easily have been levelled; it might not have brought him the sack, but the comments he made were hardly becoming of a national team manager in the company of strangers, even if he believed the conversation to be off the record.

Of equal - probably even greater -concern are The Daily Telegraph's investigations into corruption in English football that they maintain reveal that managers, officials and agents have been taking money to arrange player transfers. They claim to have evidence of an assistant manager at 'a high profile football club' accepting a £5,000 payment, that ten managers have taken bribes to fix player transfers, and that a high-profile manager admitted his players broke FA rules by betting on their own games, which he failed to report. In addition two well known managers allegedly discussed working for the same fictitious firm as Sam Allardyce did.

Now the allegations of actual offences are of course, very serious and deserve rigorous investigation by the Football Association and the appropriate penalties imposed if the individuals are guilty, but I am sure I am not the only person uneasy about the ethics of punishing managers who have allegedly discussed working for fictitious firms in ways that would contravene FA regulations. Allardyce called it 'entrapment' and there is no better word for it, and entrapment is a morally difficult concept to defend in every circumstance, however while the law protects against the state (the police for example) causing citizens to perform illegal acts, it does not protect against private parties - newspapers or other sections of the media -doing so. And in those instances, the actions of the private ‘entrapper’ often go beyond what would be deemed appropriate by law enforcement officers.

While there are many who would argue that the actions of The Daily Telegraph have exposed an element of the erstwhile England manager's character that would disbar him from holding that post, it is equally possible to argue that without the newspaper's actions, Allardyce would not have had the opportunity to agree to commit a hypothetical offence. The circumstances are like a thought experiment, akin to Schrodinger's Cat: Is an incitement to commit an offence where the parties to which the offence relate are fictitious and the person inciting the act has no intention of actually commissioning the act nor of paying the person being so incited, an actual offence? And how far does one take this? Perhaps if a football manager were engaged in conversation by a journalist and asked if, hypothetically, he could arrange for a player to be owned by a third party and he said, yes, in theory he could, would that be an offence? No, of course not and Allardyce's actions, while stupid are not much more than one step removed.

But, having spent so long railing against corruption in FIFA and UEFA, the FA could not stand idly by and allow any behaviour that might possibly be construed as corrupt to go unpunished. Sam Allardyce might claim that his only crime is stupidity: as a defence goes, that isn't good enough. And the problem with complaining about entrapment is that unless you say 'No,' you've no defence at all.