A report in November 2014 by the Sports People’s Think Tank (SPTT) and the Fare network has revealed that, more than 100 years since the first black professional footballer played in England, and during a period in which we have seen between 25% and 30% of professional footballers in the domestic game coming from black and minority ethnic (BME) groups, there are only two black football managers today. The report also describes as ‘pitifully low’ the number of BMEs employed across senior coaching and management positions in English professional football (Figure 1).
Ironically, sport has often been identified as one arena in which opportunities for BMEs are perhaps better than in other employment areas. It has been suggested, for example, that some teachers may still ‘channel’ especially black boys into sport, assuming they lack other kinds of talent and expertise. This may have contributed to the higher number of BME players in football, but it seems to have had little impact on post-playing careers. People from minority ethnic backgrounds are poorly represented across the game in senior coaching and management positions (Table 1).
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