Horne named acting FA chief executive but permanent appointment put on ice
CHAIRMAN Lord Triesman insists the Football Association will not be rushed into appointing a new permanent chief executive before this summer’s World Cup.
Alex Horne, the erstwhile chief operating officer, was yesterday made acting chief executive after the shock resignation of Ian Watmore on Monday. But Triesman, who held an emergency board meeting at Wembley yesterday, says the search for the organisation’s seventh chief executive in 11 years will take time.
“There’s no desire to spend a huge amount of time on this but I want to make sure that when the board is slightly reconfigured, as it is each summer, that it has the chief executive that it wants,” he said.
“If we appointed a new CEO before the World Cup we’d only do it by failing to advertise and failing to find the right candidates.”
Watmore had been in the job for less than a year before quitting over disagreements with senior figures on the FA board. He is thought to have been particularly angered by the leaking of an email. Horne, expected to be in charge until the end of the year, was acting chief executive in 2008 after Brian Barwick’s departure.