Football Association chief executive Mark Bullingham said on Wednesday that the release of a report into historical child abuse in soccer marked a "dark day" for the sport.
"No child should ever have experienced the abuse you did," he said in a statement to victims. "What you went through was horrific and it is deeply upsetting that more was not done by the game at the time, to give you the protection you deserved."
The report found that the FA acted far too slowly to implement measures to protect children between October 1995 and May 2000 because of significant institutional failings.