Dario Gradi retires from Crewe role three years after FA suspension

Crewe Alexandra have announced that Dario Gradi has retired as the club’s director of football at the age of 78.

Gradi has been suspended by the Football Association since December 2016 in connection with the investigation into sexual abuse in football. He faces questions about the Barry Bennell scandal at Crewe and has always denied any wrongdoing.

In August a separate independent inquiry concluded that he had information that might have stopped one serial offender who is now feared to have preyed on more than 25 victims.

According to the findings of a two-and-a-half-year investigation, Gradi failed to report Eddie Heath when they worked together at Chelsea in the early 1970s despite receiving a complaint that his colleague had indecently assaulted one boy in the showers.

Instead, Gradi, as Chelsea’s assistant manager, visited the boy’s parents and admits in his own evidence to the inquiry that he did not want the matter to go any further. “I’d got no intention of getting Eddie Heath into trouble,” he says.

Gradi has been at Crewe since 1983, including 24 years and more than 1,359 first-team games as manager. He was described by Crewe in a statement announcing his retirement as “the club’s most successful manager having won four promotions, most notably guiding the club into the second tier of English football in 1997 and again in 2003”.

The club said: “Crewe Alexandra would like to thank Dario for his outstanding 36 years of service to the football club and are pleased to know that he would be happy to continue to assist the club’s senior coaching staff with his invaluable experience in the future.”

Gradi was awarded an MBE for his services to football in 1998.