In the same fortnight Jose Mourinho declared “there is no racism in football” amid his staunch, strong-fisted rejection of the Rooney Rule, UEFA fined Levski Sofia just £7,750 after supporters of the Bulgarian side held up a banner stating ‘say yes to racism’.
One can understand where the Chelsea manager was coming from, his perspective is simple; football is a sport too competitively pure to let such superficialities as skin colour or creed prevent the best of the best reaching the game’s summit. There may be some politically diverse views amongst the terraces, but that’s more representative of societal issues than it is the culture of football itself.
Yet, racism is still clearly a problem in football, even in the leftie-liberal, politically-correct realms of England, and especially in the management racket.
There’s just two black managers throughout England’s top four divisions – Chris Powell and Keith Curle – and both of them were only given jobs this month after spending the summer unemployed. That’s just two black managers out of a possible 92, 2%, in a sport where nearly 30% the playing contingent in England are black or from an ethnic minority, in a country where nearly 6% of the population are black or mixed race.
It’s not a question of reluctant participation either, an apathy if you will; 18% of those who attend coaching courses are black according to the PFA, yet they’re represented by just 3% of coaches, managers and technical directors at senior, academy or junior level throughout the country.
The numbers simply don’t add up. Mirror Football’s Darren Lewis believes the disparity is due to old stereotypes surrounding black players still persisting in the English game; “Years ago it was stereotype (and ignorance) used to justify the lack of progression for black players from the pitch to the manager’s office.
“Black players’ “thing” was speed and athleticism. You couldn’t rely on them – supposedly – to be strategists but they could beat you for pace (when it was sunny of course) and they could jump higher than their white counterparts in the box. Who’d have thought that in the 21st century the lazy, tired thinking would not be as overt but the discrimination, the glass ceiling would continue to exist nonetheless?”
The fact that just 13% of captains throughout the Football League and the top flight are black further supports this theory.
And even if you’re a stato-sceptic, consider the qualitative evidence – only in August this year was former Cardiff City boss Malky Mackay exposed for sending a series of racist and homophobic texts to Sporting Director Ian Moody.
“F**kin’ Chinkeys. There’s enough dogs in Cardiff for us all to go around,” “Not many white faces amongst that lot but worth considering” and a picture entitled ‘Black Monopoly’, with every square saying ‘go to jail’, are just some of more notable messages sent from his work phone.
His colleagues and counterparts claim Mackay to be a rare bad apple, but the statistics suggest there are other managers in England who also employ this EDL-inspired vocabulary behind closed doors, even if it’s used, on the most part, in ill-tasting jest.
The League Managers’ Association knew about the allegations for three months and did nothing, before describing the text-gate affair as an episode in ‘friendly banter’.
Clearly, racism – be it benign and tacit in the safety of offices, or screamed from the terraces by mobs of Ultras – is still a major problem in football.
Finally, it appears, English football is prepared to do something about it, with Football League chairman Greg Clarke leading an ‘all-encompassing review of black and ethnic minority coaches’. At the centre of the investigation will be a discussion over the introduction of the Rooney Rule – the equality legislation that has transformed the NFL, and for whatever reason, appears to have discovered an enemy in Jose Mourinho.
The rule, making it mandatory for all teams to interview minority candidates for senior management and coaching positions, has seen the number of black coaches rise from just three in 2003, when it was established, to eight in 2011. That’s a dramatic shift from 9% to 19% in just eight years, although admittedly, there are now just five minority representatives in the NFL this season.
It may not be the ultimate solution to English football’s problems – positive discrimination and affirmative action always come with their negative stigmatisms. Likewise, if we were to extrapolate the experiences of the MLS to the English game, the figure of black managers would rise from only two to 13.
But former FA chief Sir Trevor Brooking claims; “given the number of players from all backgrounds, it would be madness if in five or 10 years’ time that’s not reflected in the coaching. I’m sure we’ll have 10 out of 92, 20 out of 92, that over a period of time will be from the different ethic mixes,” believing the management system is capable of evolving naturally without the help of the Rooney Rule.
But that’s precisely the point Sir Trev – the situation English football’s already in, with just two minority representatives out of 92, already constitutes institutional insanity. Clearly, the process needs to be accelerated. It requires a catalyst, specifically in regards to placing black role models in high positions that younger generations can hope to one day emulate. The longer the game goes on without black managers, the less black players will consider it a plausible career path.
The Rooney Rule is by no means perfect, and as Jose Mourinho obviously feels, a foe to the competitiveness that makes football thrive. A very capitalist point of view, I must say.
But to paraphrase Dan Rooney himself, recently quizzed on the issue by BBC Radio, British football has nothing to lose. We either adopt a radical policy that at least attempts to improve the situation, and comes with a proven record from the US – a country that still upheld Jim Crow laws, including lynching, until the 1960s – or maintain the status quo until the next Jose Mourinho, Sir Alex Ferguson or Pep Guardiola just happens to be black.
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