Also worth nothing how many managers in the PL and English league in general are non British and didn't play in the PL. La Liga has only around 10% black players iirc, so a lower proportion of managers who played in Spain would be black anyway.
There's no such thing as equality, if it were there would be no need for a racial quota, no need for two different physical tests depending on gender and all sports would be unisex. Don't think the people campaigning for sexual equality would like that too much.
Intresting reading this thread as a black man, Without putting my views out there, the OP is obviously correct but only in a perfect world. Dont forget what pressure the crowd and supporters play on the owners when a manager is not doing well, and dont forget the time honoured tradition of racist football fans on the terraces and in the seats. Totally agree that all races should be given equal chances in all walk of ife, but the simple fact of life is that is doesnt happen for a multitude of reasons. Without appearing to seem racist, judging by a lot of the posts i've just read, it does seem that most of (if not all) of the replies were written by "white" posters. I have no problems with that, just some seem a litle nieve and lacking in understanding-(not because they are white, because they havent experienced it) I genuinely dont mean to ofend anyone and its actually quite a good read. just think a few should take thier heads out of the sky and come back down to earth a bit. its very hard to understand racism without actually experiencing it. maybe go live in Africa or India for a couple of years then it may make more sense. Just my observations
It all depends really At grass roots if there are s**tloads of available black managers and almost all working managers are white... in fact when I think of it.. just based on averages there should be more black managers, IF there is flocks of them looking for jobs Can someone list prominent black managers who have managed in Europe? I can't think of any at all
I think we need to know how many Black people actually take their coaching badges and then never get a chance to progress before we start talking about the lack of black managers being down to racism.
Valid point mate but wouldn't you assume that of the possibly, hundreds of black players, there would be more than the 5 or so listed. i dont know TBH, but i can definitely confirm that there is still racism in football ie Suarez, Terry incidents etc. Im not necessarily saying that these people are racist, but they definitely brought a lot of racists out of the woodwork when discussing these incidents. Both for and against. Of course, back to the OP. Its totally correct...In a perfect world..
There could be a number of factors at play. 1. Black players are not taking their badges in the numbers that the white players are, so percentage wise there are fewer to choose from. 2. At the interview stage, there could only be one black interviewee and 10 white, so the odds are already stacked against him. 3. As someone has already pointed out, they are not successful enough to entice other owners to take a punt on other black managers. 4. It may also be that African footballers playing in England, don't want to coach/manage in England or want to take their badges in England. Or anywhere else for that matter. I was reading an article about the same issue in the NBA. Below is part of that article. The article also goes onto say black coaches in the NBA are as good compared to their white counterparts. There are 30 NBA teams, and therefore 30 NBA head coaches. In a league in which over 80 percent of the players are black, 18 head coaches are white, and 11 are black. This, by itself, hints at the superiority of white coaches. (One NBA head coach, Erik Spoelstra of the defending champion Miami Heat, has a white father and a Filipino mother.)
That part does raise an interesting issue. The UK population is around 3.5% black and mixed race, and barring France I can't think of many major countries in Europe with a higher proportion of black people. So why are people so willing to accept a massively disproportionate representation of black players in football compared to the general population, but not a disproportionate representation of white managers in football compared to the population of players? I don't remember any outcry about racism when clubs cherry picked black players from youth level, leaving huge numbers of white players behind. It doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that, if we accept black players are statistically better at playing football that white players, white managers may well be statistically better at managing football clubs than black managers.
African countries have in the past employed white managers for their national teams. Mostly white Frenchmen or from the old eastern Europe. Not sure if that is still the case. This has never been an issue of race.
Very valid point. But I don't think it's a football issue as such, probably just a social issue. Giving morons something like twitter to voice their ill informed vitriol is dangerous. I don't think you'll ever get a 100% non racist society anyway. Some people are always going to want to 'stick with their own' or whatever. I'm over simplifying it but the principle is probably true.
Is there also a potential issue that maybe some owners are wary of employing black managers because it's more of a potential hot potato if they have to sack them. I wouldn't want to hire say John Barnes, he do a **** job and then get accused of racism if I had to sack him. Obviously not everyone will have that outlook but only takes a few to start effecting stats of black managers getting jobs. Obviously this is more relevant to black managers than black coaches/other staff.
There is a hint of discrimination in the statistics. Of course when people look into it deeper, these may be the explanations for the stats - Players -30% and coaches and managers 3%. If we have a process of open and transparent (with advert/interviews) recruiting of coaches and managers instead of word of mouth, mates etc then it may make things a bit better. I do not think anyone is saying we should have 30% of all managers as black or from ethnic minorities. As I sadi earlier may be they are not interested or do not have the badges etc but like we know it is a vicious circle. Black and other ethnic minority candidates look at the stats, think they have no chance and therfore do not bother with the badges and do not apply, the pool gets less and less and the number of black coaches gets smaller and smaller. There should be no question of favouring the black candidate. But if the black candidate has the same experience and qualification then they should have an interview (NOT the job). If he does not get the job becaude the management prefers another then fair enough. This should not be positive discrimination. Just an equal opportunity amongst races to be considered for a job.
It would be interesting to see what figures are available say for the last ten years, The number of footballers retiring, their ethnicity, whether they took their badges and if they are in coaching/management jobs. I think it would be fair to say that of the 30% of black footballers, around 5-7% are not British. Your Drogbas, Toures, Adebayors, Fernandos are highly unlikely going to be coaching or managing in this country. If they do any coaching, it would be back in their homelands. So you are down to 23%. Then take into account the British black footballers who have no interest or desire in coaching/management, you are probably be down to around 5 or 6% of all black players being eligible to take a coaching or managers job. So a 3% figure of current jobs going to black coaches/managers isn't that unrealistic.
2012/13 Of all the players, 32.22 per cent were black. Of the 232 English players, 80 are black (or 34.48 per cent). Around 2 per cent of the general British population were black. Just to throw some more grenades into the mix, if 2% of the population were black why was there such a huge disparity in the black representation in football then? White people are clearly under represented when taken as a proportion of the country's population, but I don't recall many white players crying out about racism that they weren't picked. Why are clubs signing significantly higher proportion of black players than their numbers would suggest? Black manager representation is actually closer to the 2% than the player representation and yet the manager situation receives much more news. Now, I'm not saying we should kick black players out of the PL to balance the proportions - far from - but what I am suggesting, like many other posters before me, is that such a high proportion of black players on the books relative to the total population clearly shows there can't be that much racism within the leagues else this figure would be much lower. Players are signed on ability and nothing else. I think that much is obvious, yet we are lead to believe that managers are discriminated against? I'm not saying there is zero racism in football, but there can't be as much as the news reports are making it out to be. Someone earlier, I forget who right now, mentioned about how in a few years time the numbers will be higher - and I completely agree. You look at the numbers of black footballers in the 90s and they were much lower than they are now. A handful of them went into coaching/management and a handful of those were successful. These are small handfuls. Compare that to the number of black players now in the game. In 10 years, a larger handful of them will go into coaching and management and a handful of those will be success - a much bigger handful than last time. Things just need time to progress and build from what happened in yester-years. What annoys me is the likes of Ince or Campbell expecting instantly higher numbers of black people in coaching or management positions when it was only 20 years ago we had very few playing in the league. Let people (all people) filter through the system. Lets not even start looking at other races or nationalities who are far more under represented than black people. Gender is a whole new can of worms too.
