The FA must up its game — or get ready for a kicking

I meet Crouch for a cup of tea in her office in Whitehall. The room looks like a teenage boy’s bedroom, with signed football shirts and other sport memorabilia all over the place. Crouch, tall and straight-talking, tells me she has been sports-mad since she was young.

“The estate I grew up on was very much boy-dominated,” she explains. “My sister and I were the only girls. So, basically, if you didn’t go out and do sport, you didn’t play.”

She was raised in Kent by her mother, a social worker who had Crouch when she was “19 or 20”. Crouch’s parents divorced when she was eight. There was never much money around and Christmas presents were sporadic.

“We were traditional latch-key kids,” Crouch says. “Mum was working and we were pretty self-sufficient. I’m very proud of my mother, although I probably don’t tell her that enough.”

In school and university summer holidays — Crouch studied law and politics at Hull — she worked in McDonald’s.

How was that? “Brilliant,” she tells me. “I absolutely loved working there. It’s a really mixed environment. Everybody was interesting in different ways.” She still has a soft spot for a McChicken sandwich.

After a variety of jobs, both in the City and in Tory politics, Crouch was elected MP for Chatham and Aylesford in 2010, gaining the largest majority the constituency had seen. She broke her own record in last year’s election.

Being minister for sport is Crouch’s “dream job”, yet the decision to take it wasn’t easy. When she was offered the post by David Cameron last year, she had recently had a miscarriage. It happened a month before the election. She and her partner, Steve, a radio DJ, were devastated.

She told Cameron that she was unsure whether “the pressures of ministerial life” would work well with her ambition to become a mother. As they spoke on the speakerphone, Steve wrote Tracey a note saying she’d be “perfect” for the job.

Cameron was sympathetic about the dilemma Crouch was facing but gave her only 30 minutes to make up her mind. In the end she went for it.

How does she feel about her miscarriage being common knowledge? “I don’t find it at all strange that everybody knows,” she tells me frankly. She doesn’t like talking about it because it’s “obviously an upsetting subject” but she feels compelled to for the sake of others. “There are lots of women out there who don’t talk about it, and actually you need the support around you,” she says.

But within weeks of taking the ministerial post, Crouch fell pregnant again. She had her son, Freddie, in February and then became the first Tory minister to take maternity leave. She is also the first MP to take advantage of legislation passed last year permitting fathers to use some of their partner’s maternity leave. While Crouch works in London, Steve is in Kent looking after their son — and “loving every minute” of it.

Although she will talk openly about her family, when it comes to government policy, Crouch sticks to the party line with a stubbornness verging on the parodic.

When I ask her about Brexit she repeats Theresa May’s mantra that Britain will “make a good job of it”. When I inquire what shape she expects Brexit to take, she says: “Brexit means Brexit” with robotic force. She is a staunch advocate of grammar schools, having attended one herself.

She refuses to comment on the infighting between May and the former education secretary Nicky Morgan and gushes that May looked “fantastic” in the much talked-about leather trousers that she wore for an interview with this newspaper last month.

In the end it’s impossible not to admire Crouch’s bullishness. I can’t imagine her being toyed with by crusty old governing sports bodies or by the men who dominate parliamentary select committees. Still, I wonder whether she can have a real impact.

Earlier this year the FA signed a television rights deal for an estimated $1bn (£800m). The deal it struck last week with Nike for the England team’s kit is said to be worth more than £400m alone. And here is Crouch, threatening to cut about £30m of public funding. Is that not a piffling amount im comparison?

Apparently it’s not just about the cash. “The FA doesn’t want to lose the public funding because that would be hugely embarrassing to them,” Crouch insists. She is confident that Greg Clarke, the FA chairman, has the “enthusiasm and passion to instigate reform”.

This strikes me as hopelessly optimistic, but perhaps it is just the words of a career politician wary of courting controversy.

Last week Crouch attracted attention for saying Clarke was wrong to comment that it would be “impossible” for gay Premier League players to come out because of the “vile abuse” they would attract. Crouch condemned Clarke’s comments as “unhelpful”.

I ask her what she meant. “The research shows that actually the vast majority of football supporters would have no problem at all with [a gay player coming out],” she argues. “We’re talking about a small minority of people who are effectively creating a culture of fear for players who may wish to come out.”

Google has just revealed that its UK search engine’s top trending term of the year was “Euro 2016”. Does Crouch know why England performed so dismally in the competition?

“I have no idea,” she replies.

Come on — the minister for sport has no idea whatsoever why our national football team can’t win big tournaments?

“I’m sure there are a variety of reasons but it’s . . . I think we need to just stay firmly behind England’s football team,” she says eventually.

And this very, very careful politician buttons her lip.

@leafarbuthnot