Sammy Lee has left his role as England’s assistant manager, although his departure is not the result of the Football Association taking any action against him following the recent court finding that Lee was involved in transfer irregularities and lied in court. The FA released a statement in which it made clear that Lee was leaving with “the FA’s best wishes” as part of the new England manager, Gareth Southgate, assembling his own coaching support staff. In the statement, Southgate praised Lee’s work and said he had “great respect” for him.
Last month the court of appeal upheld a 2014 judgment in the high court that while he was the manager at Bolton Wanderers in 2007, Lee was involved in the poaching of the midfielder Gavin McCann from McCann’s agent, Tony McGill. His honour Judge Waksman QC had ruled in the high court that he found Lee’s claim in evidence that he met SEM, the agency that poached the player, earlier than was the case in reality, “false” and “unreliable”.
Of that meeting, which Lee and the then Bolton general manager, Frank McParland, had said in evidence took place in a Liverpool restaurant, Waksman said in a subsequent ruling on costs: “The events attested to by the Bolton witnesses concerning these meetings simply did not happen. True, I did not use the word ‘dishonesty’ [in his original judgment] but plainly if their evidence on this issue was false they must have known it to be so.”
The FA took no action against Lee, McParland, the SEM agents or anybody else whose conduct or evidence was criticised in the 2014 judgment. In July, after the FA appointed Sam Allardyce as the England manager, the governing body appointed Lee, who worked with Allardyce for years at Bolton, as his assistant.
When the court of appeal upheld all of Waksman’s findings against Lee, Bolton and SEM, and reversed the judge’s decision not to award McGill damages, the FA did not comment and again took no action. A spokesman said that this was because of legal proceedings being still ongoing, although, in fact, the only issue that has been referred back to Waksman is the amount of money McGill should be compensated.
When it was revealed in September that Allardyce had been covertly filmed by the Daily Telegraph, the FA parted company with him the same day, despite, as the FA’s strategy director, Robert Sullivan, later told a parliamentary inquiry, Allardyce not having broken any rules and having not, as widely reported, advised the undercover reporters how to “get around” regulations on third-party ownership of players.
“I have great respect for Sammy,” Southgate said in the FA’s statement. “He is somebody who I worked with as a player and his personality and professionalism were excellent throughout my period as interim manager. I felt it was important for me to bring in my own support team and Sammy fully respected that.”
Lee said: “I should like to place on record my sincere thanks to the FA for the opportunity they gave me to work with the national team. It has been a great honour.”
The FA said that further appointments to Southgate’s backroom staff will be announced in due course.
