John Barnes claims he is struggling to get a job in management because he is black. The former Liverpool star's last managerial job was at Tranmere in 2009. He lasted four months before being sacked. The 51-year-old has previously been in charge of Celtic and the Jamaica national team. Barnes insisted that had he been white he would have got another job. 'A white manager loses his job and gets another job, he loses his job, he gets another job. Very few black managers can lose their job and get another job,' he told John Barnes: Sports Life Stories, to be broadcast on ITV4 on Tuesday. 'What I can judge it from is by looking at society. How many black people are there in the higher echelons of any industry? We can talk about journalism, we can talk about politics. So why should football be any different?' Barnes' first job in management, at Celtic for the 1999-2000 season, ended in the wake of an embarrassing Scottish Cup defeat to Inverness. But he denied that job was too much too soon. He said: 'Well, if it comes now at 51, I don't think it will be any different. It's more to do with the perception of my ability to do the job, because there's a certain perception of who can make a good manager.' Barnes' former England team-mate Ian Wright agreed that the colour of his skin was counting against Barnes. The former Arsenal man said: 'With someone of John Barnes' ability and stature, to not have worked more in the game with something that he's desperate to do. I don't know what else it can be?' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...s-claims-t-job-management-black.html#comments So what do you think? Is Barnes(and Ian Wright) right? Or is it simply because Barnes just ****?
I am a huge fan of John Barnes the footballer. An amazing talent. I read his autobiography (playing days) and he put up with some serious ****e. I noticed that there is a program on John Barnes this week somewhere on the television and I sat up thinking I must watch it .. then they played a clip about him saying he didn't get another job because he is black. Unless there is something I am unaware of then I strongly believe this is poppy cock. He hasn't had another job I management as he is a crap manager, as proved by his time at Celtic and Tranmere. When he left Tranmere there fortunes turned around almost immediately. I know someone who knew people at Tranmere and they said that the players just didn't get what Barnes was trying to get across. I am sorry John, you put up with a lot of vile racism in your time as a player and for that I have sympathy and detest what you had to put up with, but you just didn't do well in your two managerial jobs and it is nothing to do with racism.
Barnes is crap. I recall his time at celtic and it was not pretty. It was highly embarassing. I really do not believe it has to do with colour of his skin
I really hope he is wrong as I am a big believer in "The best man (or woman) for the job" regardless of colour, feed etc There are so many black players in squads these days, I would be surprised if this is the case. We have a small number of black managers/coaches who have proven their worth regardless of their colour that I would be surprised if this was the case. John Barnes made a complete mess of the Celtic job, especially considering he had Kenny Dalgleish as a mentor and has managed international for a good while too but has he tried to get in at the bottom rung and work his way up the ladder or has he only looked at EPL clubs where competition from top overseas managers means that it is very tough getting a job at this level
I don't think, in this country at least, that colour of skin has anything to do with getting a job. You have to be skilled to have a job, and as others have pointed out, barnes has been a unsuccesful manager. Great player though.
John Barnes doesn't get jobs because he's a crap manager. Paul Ince got a few jobs despite being quite crap. Chris Hughton has had several jobs because he's not completely crap. There are fewer black managers than there "should" be (don't really like that word in this context) but I think that's partly because a lot of managers are ex-players and there were fewer black players in the past. I think more black managers will naturally appear over time.
There's overrepresentation of black English players and underrepresentation of black English managers.
I wonder if owners or interviewers tend to appoint people that are in their social circle therefore perhaps this is part of the reason for the barrier to entry. I also wonder if more managers tend to be defensive players while in the past most ethnic players in the UK were attacking, although this may just be pure fiction.
I would be interested to know the average age of manager in the PL and FL. What was the %age of black English players at the time when these managers were at playing age? I do think there is an element of racism in a small section of the fans but I seriously doubt that any club in this day and age is discounting good managers on the basis of race. You pick the candidate who will get you results. The next criterion is which manager will get you results.
Back when the likes of Barnes & Ince were still playing there wasn't as great a number of 'black' players playing (from what I remember, I was young at this point) as there is now. I strongly believe that in the next 5-10 years when players like Drogba, Toure etc start to retire we will see an increase in the number of 'black' managers. At the end of the day there aren't exactly many choices when it comes to black managers at the moment, but there is still a decent number of them in the footballing pyramid.
In the fifties it was an accepted thing that black players were the fast attacking players and they didn't tend to be goalkeepers or defenders where a knowledge of the game was more important than physical attributes. Sounds weird now, even racist. but then it was regarded as playing to strengths. Wouldn't happen now, but people tend to like others like themselves. It may not be overt or acknowledged and nothing is meant by it...it's just natural. We have discussed this before that people tend to fancy people that look like themselves. I think Barnes has just left it too long...he should have used his fame and got jobs in the lower leagues and learnt his trade. If he had success at a few clubs, his colour would never have come into it.
Manager ages in the Premier League: Chelsea - Mourinho (52) Man City - Pellegrini (61) Arsenal - Wenger (65) Man Utd - van Gaal (63) Liverpool - Rodgers (42) Southampton - Koeman (52) Spurs - Pochettino (43) Swansea - Monk (36) West Ham - Allardyce (60) Stoke - Hughes (51) Palace - Pardew (52) Newcastle - Carver (50) Everton - Martinez (41) West Brom - Pulis (57) Hull - Bruce (54) Villa - Sherwood (46) Sunderland - Advocaat (67) Burnley - Dyche (43) QPR _ Ramsey (52) Leicester - Pearson (51) Most are 50+ and would have started a playing career 30 years ago or more.
Barnes was a hopeless manager. If I was chairman of a football club and wanted the best manager available for the job, I wouldn`t care what colour he was.
Barnes has just mistakenly used the word black, when he should have said rubbish. Tranmere fans didn't decide he was **** because he was black, they decided he was **** because he has no talent for management, as their results showed. It seems funny to me that there is obviously a recognised skillset required to be a sucessful manager, and it is one that is possessed by every high profile black ex-footballer who is currently out of work.....just saying
Don't know. But it was certainly higher than the 0, that's right 0, % of black managers currently plying their trade in the PL.
"But i'm Sol Campbell" There is a cliche about top players not making great managers. That's of course not completely true, but it's true that a great player does not guarantee to be a top coach. Looking at the PL list of managers posted above, there are plenty of half decent careers, but you'd probably only put Koeman & Hughes in the really top bracket. Both are having successful seasons, but both of their managerial careers have had their share of ups and downs I'm a firm believer that this is a numbers issue and the numbers will naturally improve in ratio with the increase in black players we've seen over the last 30 years, but the chances of any player becoming a manager let alone a PL manager are pretty small. Without doing the maths i'd say probably less than 1% get the chance. Take that number and reduce it again for the number of black players and you see what a tough profession it is to get into. I'm not going to deny that prejudices and racism exist in our society, but in todays world any football club who shows any sniff of discrimination would be rightly jumped all over. I think he could put the lack of coaching opportunities down to being English just as much as being Black
