University of York Chancellor Greg Dyke has been appointed the new Chairman of the Football Association, subject to approval by the FA Council.
Dyke, 65, will take over from David Bernstein in July after his nomination was unanimously approved by the FA’s board. He will leave his position of non-executive Chairman of Brentford football club to take up his new post.
“Football has always been a big part of my life whether playing 11-a-side on Sunday mornings or six-a-side on Thursday evenings,” he told the FA’s website.
“I was brought up in a household where my father was much more interested in whether or not you had won at football than whether you had passed your exams. In my case that was just as well.I still turn out to play six-a-side some Thursday evenings although at my age I seem to spend more time injured than playing.
“I supported my local team Brentford as a kid where my elder brother was a junior, watched York City while at university and followed Manchester United whenever I could.
“I am very excited to take on this role with The FA. At the grass roots seven million people play football every weekend, women’s football is booming and the ambition is for it to be the second biggest team participation sport in England behind only the men’s game, we have the best known, most successful league in the world with the Premier League and the Football League is so much stronger than it was eight years or nine ago.
“Having said that I am a big supporter of financial fair play which, in both the Premier League and the Football League, will have a big impact and hopefully bring a degree of financial sanity to the professional game.
“I do see one of the most important tasks for The FA is, over time, to make thoughtful changes which will benefit the England team.”
Dyke graduated from the University of York as a mature student with a BA in Politics in 1974. He has been Chancellor since 2004 and will continue in the role despite taking on the Football Association top job.
He was a non-executive director of Manchester United Football Club from 1997 to 1999, whe he resigned in order to void a conflict of interest when he took the role of Director General at the BBC.
Dyke held from 2000 until 2004, when he resigned after the publication of the Hutton Report, which described his approach to checking news stories as “defective.”