Brian Barwick

Brian Barwick is the current Chief Executive of The Football Association. He has held the post since January 2005. Previously, he was a sumo wrestler, spent 18 years at the BBC, and was ITV's Controller of Sport for seven years.

Born in Liverpool, Barwick gained a degree in Economics at Liverpool University.

BBC career

After a spell as a journalist, he joined the BBC’s sports department in 1979. During his 18-year career at the BBC he rose through the ranks becoming editor of Match of the Day, Football Focus and Sportsnight. A passionate football fan, he oversaw major events including the FIFA World Cups of 1990 and 1994, the Barcelona and Atlanta Olympic Games, the Commonwealth Games plus the European and World Athletics Championships. He was also responsible for BBC Television’s Sports Review Of The Year between 1991 and 1995. He also took the decision to axe the long running Sportsnight series and replaced it with the short-lived chatshow Onside and reguarly faced criticism that his devoted support for Liverpool led to decisions that were biased in their favour.

Whilst at the BBC, Barwick produced a large number of videos for BBC Video narrated by John Motson. This included the Official History Of Liverpool, Liverpool - The Mighty Reds, Liverpool In Europe, The Story Of The Kop, The Boys From Brazil and Match Of The Day compilations for several clubs including Middlesbrough, Manchester City, QPR, Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday, West Ham, Nottingham Forest, Derby County, Sunderland, Newcastle, Southampton, Ipswich Town, Norwich City, Leeds United. Brian was presented with an award for producing titles that sold over 1 million videos by BBC Video heads Paul Holland and Mike Diprose in 1999.

ITV career

In 1998 he left BBC Sport to become ITV's Controller of Sport, and during his time at ITV he oversaw the channel's biggest-ever audience of 23.8m viewers for the match between England and Argentina at the 1998 World Cup. He revamped ITV's sport coverage as well as maintaining the channel's high-profile events, such as the Champions League rights - the renewal of which he successfully negotiated. He also withstood competition from the BBC to gain the rights to show Premiership highlights although his attempt to place them early evening on Saturdays failed and the rights were lost back to the BBC after just three years. But it was not all success for Barwick, who saw ITV come under heavy criticism for its production of the 2003 Rugby World Cup, something which he resented.

While at ITV he also sacked ITV's star summariser Ron Atkinson after the pundit made racist comments about Chelsea defender Marcel Desailly.

Time as Chief Executive of the FA

Barwick had worked with the FA before joining as the Chief Executive, negotiating a number of TV rights deals for both channels. He is widely regarded as responsible for England's 2008 European Championship qualification fiasco [1], but doesn't think this merits his resignation.