Former FA chairman David Bernstein has blamed the governing body for England's poor World Cup campaign.
The 71-year-old insisted the fault for the national team's woes lay not with the players or manager Roy Hodgson - whom he appointed - but with an FA which blocked his attempts at reform before he was forced to step down.
Bernstein is quoted by the Telegraph: "We've been knocked out of the World Cup again and this compounds 40 years of under-performance. We've had different managers, different players and, by and large, the same results.
"Is there a connection between that and governance structure issues? Of course there is.
"As in any organisation, if you're not right at the top, the rest won't be right. It's a systemic issue and has a long history.
"If you read Walter Winterbottom's biography, around about the 1950s when we lost to the USA at the World Cup, you'd hear the same sort of issues. Things have changed in that respect less than you might think.
"The Premier League has £3 billion-£4 billion of income and is a fantastic product. Nobody disputes that. The FA has £300 million, less than one tenth of the income. So it's outgunned financially.
"The Premier League exercises considerable influence over the game and over the FA. It has strong representation on the FA board.
"The Premier League is a 21st century organisation: it's slick, it's modern - although it does lack what I would call 'normal' governance as well.
"The FA structure is still mid-20th century. The FA council is outmoded and sits below a very obscure shareholder structure. The committee structure beggars belief. It drives what is a very good FA executive crazy. They feel they're being smothered by a blanket.
"The FA needs a modern, independent structure to try to balance the financial power of the Premier League.
"There has always been a problem but it has been magnified by the Premier League's success.
"Nature abhors a vacuum and the Premier League has taken advantage, in a way, of the vacuum created by the FA."
