All the FA wants for Christmas is a chairman with ideas and character

From the Times chief sports correspondent Matt Dickinson

The interviews are being carried out in secret, the chosen candidate will be presented before Christmas and the ramifications for English football could be far-reaching. So, who is going to be the FA’s new independent chairman?

If you care about the fate of the England team in ten or twenty years’ time, and not only the chances of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup, it should be occupying your thoughts every bit as much as the manoeuvrings of José Mourinho and Fabio Capello.

It is not, of course, which is why it is worth asking how seriously we take the wide-ranging issues that have been raised since England’s dismal failure to qualify for Euro 2008. The woeful neglect of sport in state schools may seem less urgent once Brian Barwick, the FA’s chief executive, has snared his “world-class” manager. There may not be so many angry discussions about the size of children’s pitches once Fabio Capello, the high-class successor to Steve McClaren, sits at the top table with Barwick beaming in the chair beside him.

Once the national team improve, as they surely will even under a man whose English is not perfect, we will go back to laughing along with the John Smith’s “ ’Ave it” advertisement rather than acknowledging, ruefully, that it reveals a national weakness. A familiar complacency will take hold unless someone stops it and who better than someone starting afresh, someone from outside the game, someone installed right at the top of the pyramid? The new independent chairman, like the next England head coach, should be appointed in time for the next FA board meeting on December 19.

If this seems to be putting a lot of significance on a man in a suit, we should first acknowledge the restrictions that will greet him. He will join an FA that remains encumbered by a laborious committee structure. The 92-man council, complete with its representatives from the Forces and Oxbridge, continues to be a ludicrous anachronism. The Burns report, the recent structural review of the organisation, was just a bit of tinkering.

But all of this just makes the choice of independent chairman more important - and it makes it critical that the man chosen has courage, conviction and dynamism. At a time when the two leading organisations, the Premier League and FA, are in deadlock over something as important as youth development, the national sport has never been more in need of someone to knock heads together. Gerry Sutcliffe, the Sports Minister, has yet to show that he has anything to offer either for children or the elite.

Will we get a man of boldness? We are dependent on a four-man headhunting panel that has been led by Lord Mawhinney, the chairman of the Football League, who would love the job. Some suggest that the new chairman’s independence is already compromised, given Mawhinney’s influence.

And with the shortlist thought to be down to Sir Roy Gardner and Lord Triesman of Tottenham, there are mutterings within the game that the FA is not about to be chaired by a man who will pull up trees.

Schumacher may be Germany’s fastest taxi driver

BERLIN (AFP) - Michael Schumacher may well be the fastest taxi driver in Germany after the seven-times world champion shocked a cab driver by taking over the wheel in order to be on time for a flight.

Schumacher, 38, flew into the aerodrome at the Bavarian town of Coburg on Saturday and took a taxi to the village of Gehuelz, 30 kilometres away, to pick up a new puppy - an Australian Shepherd dog called “Ed”.

But when the former Formula One ace, plus his wife and two children, caught a taxi back to the airport they were short on time and, after a polite request, cab driver Tuncer Yilmaz watched in wonder as Schumacher took the wheel.

“I found myself in the passenger seat, which was strange enough, but to have “Schumi” behind the wheel of my cab was incredible,” Mr Yilmaz told the Muenchner Abendzeitung.

“He drove at full throttle around the corners and over-took in some unbelievable places.”

Mr Yilmaz was well rewarded for the unusual journey - on top of the 60 euros (88 US dollars) fare, he was also given a 100 euros (146 US dollars) tip.

Schumacher’s spokesperson Sabine Kehm later confirmed the story.

The German track ace, who now lives in Switzerland, retired from Formula One in 2006 after a glittering career and, despite test drives for his old team Ferarri, has insisted there is no chance of a return to racing.