The Football Association has been told it must “work a lot harder” to ensure there are realistic candidates from racially diverse backgrounds to manage the England men’s team in the future.
Delroy Corinaldi, Black Footballers Partnership co-founder, has spoken out after the FA stated its intention to run an open recruitment process to find Gareth Southgate’s successor, earlier this month publishing the criteria it was looking for in the right candidate.
The prospect of England appointing a black manager appears slim with Chris Hughton, Sol Campbell and Darren Moore all 50-1 shots in the bookmakers’ odds.
There are currently just two black managers out of the 92 clubs in the top four tiers of English football – Nuno Espirito Santo at Nottingham Forest and Moore at Port Vale in League Two.
Data published by the BFP last year found 43 per cent of Premier League players were black, but that just 4.4 per cent of managerial and coaching positions were held by black people – 57 out of 1,304 positions.
Corinaldi has previously ascribed that disparity to a “grass ceiling” facing black players and told the PA news agency: “Any England manager needs to be selected from the deepest talent pool of the best managers available. The fans would expect nothing less, and the same for black footballers.
“The problem for the game is that while the England talent pool of white ex-players has a deep end of 96 per cent of managers, the talent pool for black former players is barely a paddling pool at four per cent of managers, which is difficult to comprehend when the number of black footballers in the Premier League stands at 43 per cent.
“The FA has to work a lot harder to help deepen that pool of black former players transitioning to management to ensure next time around talk of a diverse panel looks better than tokenistic virtue signalling.
“BFP stands ready to work with the FA to deliver this change but this requires a sincere commitment to do so.”
Former Luton and England midfielder Ricky Hill has been afforded just one management chance at senior level in this country, taking charge at his former club for four months in 2000.
Hill, who either side of his stint in English management has racked up three coach of the year awards in professional leagues elsewhere in the world, said: “So many (racially diverse people) have found a way to establish themselves in the industry but yet still, once they finish their playing careers, that 43 per cent become invisible to that industry, invisible to work within the game any more for the rest of their lives, after they have been involved for 20 or 25 years.
“I don’t think there is anything that has been put in place to ensure that fairness is seen. You can talk about going and getting your (coaching) licences – we have so many people with licences in a drawer who have never been able to use them.”
Hill pushed for English football to adopt something akin to the Rooney Rule in 2004, which would have required clubs to interview at least one racially diverse candidate for every vacancy, but was told it was tokenism.
“It is not tokenism, it was an opportunity to try to break through some of the barriers.
“The major barrier is black and racially diverse people having access to the decision-makers, that’s all I saw it as. And if I was able to get in front of them, I can sell my vision.”
While the EFL’s 72 clubs finally adopted the Rooney Rule in 2019, the percentage of the coaching and managerial workforce from racially diverse backgrounds in the professional game remains low.
Hill believes there is a role for football’s independent regulator in holding clubs to account on equality and diversity.
“If the industry has not been able to ensure that equality of opportunity is afforded to all personnel including black and Asian people over the last 30-plus years then they cannot be trusted to do so,” he said.
“The possibility of an independent regulator looks like it could be the only recourse in addressing the ongoing gross disparity of black and Asian inclusion within the industry at all levels and positions.”
John Barnes, who won 79 England caps, also told PA: “I don’t like playing these culture wars about why there are no black managers in charge.
“We know why, and if we are going to challenge it, we need to do it from the bottom up and not from the top down. We have to start looking for respect for people down (the pyramid) to give them an equal opportunity.”
The FA published the latest data from the voluntary Football Leadership Diversity Code last November in which it accepted the pace of change “remains slow”.
The governing body’s board has agreed in principle to create a new FA rule making it mandatory for all professional clubs in English leagues to report full data on age, sex, gender, ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation within their organisations from the start of the 2024-25 season.