Black History Month: Against the Odds – an insight into Black managers in English football | Football News

Black managers in English football. It is one of those discussion points that arises a few times a season.

A Black manager is hired. A Black manager is fired. We speak about it. But the numbers do not seem to be changing.

Research from The Black Footballers Partnership in 2023 stated that 44 per cent of Premier League and 34 per cent of English Football League players were Black, with only four per cent of managers being Black.

Although the numbers fluctuate season to season, the highest number of Black managers to start the season in charge of clubs from the 92 in the last 20 seasons is eight – 11 per cent.

The start of this season saw just two Black managers in jobs in England’s professional leagues. But what is also alarming is the number of Black ex-players taking up positions on the coaching staff in the 92.

Clubs are not yet mandated to publish the data around their coaching staff, but a look at the majority of Premier League and EFL benches will let you see the situation with your own eyes.

In Against the Odds: Black Managers in English football, we looked into the statistics and spoke to people all across the men’s game.

Debate over the ‘Rooney Rule’

When it came to the Rooney Rule, where clubs commit to interviewing a candidate from an under-represented background, participants in this documentary were roughly split on how they viewed it.

Liam Rosenior, former Hull head coach and now Strasbourg head coach, is an advocate for such schemes. George Boateng, first-team coach at Coventry, is not.

“There’s a lot of talk about the Rooney Rule, and having designated interviews for players for Black and ethnic minorities,” said Rosenior.

“That’s so important to open the doors, because you’re giving people an opportunity to speak in front of a board.

“You might not get the job but they’ll think about you for the next job.”

After spells coaching youth teams at Blackburn and Aston Villa, Boateng was the assistant coach of Ghana, working with Chris Hughton, before returning to former club Coventry as first-team coach. He has a different view.

“A lot of Black coaches have the feeling we don’t want to get a job because of a rule that has been in place,” said Boateng.

“We want to get a job because you are good at it, because you’ve proven to be there, similar to where I am today.

“Going through the interview process was difficult, but I have to go through it like everyone else.”

Yorke: ‘I don’t feel like Black managers are being treated fairly’

When looking at players with at least 250 Premier League appearances, Sky Sports News found that 34 per cent (32) of non-Black players went into management but only 16 per cent (six) of Black players did.

One of those who has struggled to break into management is former Manchester United striker Dwight Yorke, with a stint at Australian side Macarthur in 2022 being his only time in such a role since retiring in 2009.

“Football owes you no favours,” said Yorke.

“Even though as a player you feel you’ve done great in the game, it doesn’t make you a good manager.

“However, we don’t see the same for everybody. There are people in this country who have been given two or three opportunities.

“We talk about inclusion and diversity, you just want fairness. And I don’t feel like the Black managers are being treated fairly.

“We somehow feel like we have to do three or four times more before you get an opportunity, based on my experience.”

Cole: ‘If you look at the numbers, what’s changed? Nothing’

Yorke and Andy Cole were one of the Premier League’s most iconic strike partnerships.

While Yorke is desperate to manage, Cole has preferred to coach at clubs further down the pyramid – including Milton Keynes Dons, Macclesfield and Southend – alongside Paul Ince and Sol Campbell.

“It’s very difficult for these guys to get themselves an interview,” said Cole.

“I always try to say to them, don’t get disheartened about it. It’s something that you’re passionate about and it’s something that you want to do, but it does hurt.

“If you look at the numbers, what’s changed? Nothing?”

Looking at England internationals, Sky Sports News found from those with 10 caps or more, 25 per cent of Black players went into management compared with 46 per cent of non-Black players.

Two that have are Campbell and John Barnes.

Campbell’s first job would come at Macclesfield Town in 2018 after he retired in 2011. Barnes, however, took the reins at Celtic in 1999 – the same year he retired.

“I think the main thing for me is getting Black players thinking about management probably halfway through their careers,” said Campbell.

“For me it’s all about getting on the grass. Get in the system, get paid a decent wage and feel valued.

“Clubs are not doing anything new to get Black managers or coaches into the system. They’re not thinking outside the box. Football’s incredibly slow when it comes to decision-making on anything.”

The path from playing to coaching

The notion that players should start to think about coaching and their next steps in football while they are playing is one that came up numerous times.

In my conversation with Hughton, he explained the coaching badge qualifications required to coach at the top had become far more detailed as the years have gone on.

When I attended a UEFA ‘A’ Licence course in May at St George’s Park, it was telling that current players Granit Xhaka, Mohamed Elneny and Cedric Soares were there.

Thinking ahead before retirement is something former Watford striker and current technical director of football for Grenada, Gifton Noel-Williams, wishes he had done.

“If I’m honest, I probably would be further in my coaching career with the knowledge I have now, because what I would have done in my last three or four years is put myself around the right people,” said Noel-Williams.

“I would have invited myself to their dinners, I would have invited myself to what they’re doing, and because I was playing, they probably would have accepted me.

“Because when you’re playing, you’re king. As soon as you hang up the boots, people don’t pick up the phone no more.”

In football, like many industries, your network and connections can be crucial in your career.

Out of those interviewed for Against the Odds, many were coaching at or had previously coached for clubs they had played for: Emile Heskey – Leicester, George Elokobi – Maidstone, Rosenior – Hull, Darren Byfield – Walsall, Jermain Defoe – Tottenham, Aaron Lennon – Leeds.

Some of those were given an opportunity to go straight in and work at a club, like Heskey coaching for Leicester Women, while some went through a thorough interview process like Boateng at Coventry. But, either way, it proves the value of maintaining relationships at the places you have worked.

Rudy Gestede returned to Blackburn in January for work experience. By the summer, he was the club’s head of football operations, a rare position for a person of colour in English football.

“I think it’s good to keep a relationship with every club you go to,” said Gestede.

“You get paid to do a job, so be professional, have a good relationship with people.

“Because when you retire and you’re not a player anymore, you need to be able to keep this relationship with those people. 

“Build your network when you’re part of an industry, which is much easier than when you’re out. Then just make sure you have clarity of what you want to do after football and just get to it.”

Out of the 92 managers in the Premier League and EFL, 13 are in jobs that were their first chance taking charge of a team.

Getting an opportunity is hard, staying in a job is even harder.

The latest study from the Black Footballers Partnership found that a Black manager is 41 per cent more likely to be fired than a white manager – when factors such as performance are equal.

‘I was told to stay away from management’

Two high-profile Black managers who took tough opportunities are Kolo Toure and Troy Deeney.

Toure was sacked after nine winless games at Wigan, after taking over in November 2022 with the club 22nd in the Championship.

Deeney was appointed Forest Green Rovers boss in December 2023, taking charge of the League Two side in 23rd spot, lasting just six games.

Toure has yet to find a job in management since, while Deeney has pursued opportunities in the media.

“I was actually told to stay away from it [management], by people in football,” said Deeney.

“My friends and family will always support me in whatever I do, but solely within the [football] business people said stay away from it.

“Micah Richards spoke about staying in the media because there’s more opportunities. There’s more longevity and room to grow and become a personality rather than coaching, where we don’t get many opportunities anyway.

“For this kind of conversation, I think it’s more about making sure that we’re prepared enough. I think fundamentally, if you do well and you’re winning games, no one really cares what colour or creed you are.”

“There is a lot of room for improvement there. Both sides are responsible of course,” said Toure.

“Us as coaches or managers, we need to keep pushing. Whenever we have an opportunity to do well, we have to do well.”

Do the numbers worry Toure?

“I think you always have that in your mind,” he said. “Because there’s not many Black managers who have the opportunity and have the time to work.”

Throughout my conversations on this topic, boardrooms were regularly mentioned. Are the make-ups of boardrooms in football diverse enough and will a change in this have a trickle-down effect?

There is only one Black board member in the Premier League, Deji Davies at Brentford. He was appointed in 2021 after the club ran an open recruitment process with the idea of speaking to candidates from under-represented backgrounds.

“It’s a shocking statistic,” said Davies. “And I think it really highlights the work we still need to do. Hopefully I’ve inspired some people by showing that it’s possible.

“But equally if someone was interested in a role like mine from a background like mine, they would be forgiven for thinking ‘that environment isn’t for me’.”

When I posed the question to Barnes, he had a different take on that particular argument.

“Trickle-down economics doesn’t work, the theory hundreds of years ago, let’s create an environment up above for big businesses to make lots of money called trickle-down, everybody knows that has failed,” he said.

“What we have to do is we have to change from the bottom, we have to change the perception of the people down below rather than elevating the brilliant ones out of the negative.”

Noel-Williams spent time on the board of the Isthmian League, step seven and eight in the football pyramid for the south of the country.

“When I was the only Black person on the board, that grew me so much,” he said. “I grew up and I learned so much about myself because I was around people that didn’t understand my language. So I had to change my language so they understood.

“Our generation, we’ve missed it. But I think the next generation needs to really get into the boardroom and stuff from a really young age, because I think that will help them.”

Mark Jules works as a coach educator at the PFA and wants to see more work done to diversify boardrooms as he believes is being done around coaching.

“If you’re a good coach, the only way it’s going to change is through you going through the process and being the inspiration for the next generation, and I think we are definitely getting that now,” he said.

“It’s a struggle at senior professional level. I think it starts at board level myself. The more diverse it is at the top, I think it filters all the way through.

“We’re trying our best through this end, the coaching is coming through, but it’s got to be diverse at the top end as well.”

FA to implement strategy change

The Football Leadership Diversity Code was first introduced to the English professional game in 2020 as a way to encourage football to tackle inequality across senior leadership positions, broader team operations and coaching roles.

All participating clubs provided recruitment data based on the hiring targets set by the code but it was not mandatory to sign up.

As well as his role at Brentford, Davies is chair of the Football Association’s (FA) inclusion advisory board, working alongside the FA board. Its role is to work alongside and challenge the FA in the creation and delivery of diversity and inclusion strategies.

Davies exclusively told Sky Sports News that a change of strategy is soon to be implemented – the mandatory reporting of the make-up of club staff.

“The mandatory reporting will come in this season and will have to be published at the end,” he explained.

“So the key difference with that is, with the Football Leadership Diversity Code, clubs could opt in and out of that.

“We saw a large amount of take-up, but you could opt in and out. With the mandatory reporting that we’ve just brought in, we’ve changed the FA law such that clubs have to report on this. 

“Now, if you’re having to report this data, it forces a focus on it. And if you’re constantly releasing data that’s just not good enough, it becomes far more public, there’s far more pressure, and it starts to impact the way that people look at your club.

“So I think it just focuses the mind around where a club might not be succeeding how they’d like to.”

There are initiatives out there with the aim of tackling this issue. Academy-level coaching seems to be the target.

The hope is that getting coaches in at that level will lead to a natural progression to first-team positions.

It is a route taken by Premier League managers Gary O’Neil, Kieran McKenna and Enzo Maresca, although in terms of management positions at that level, we are still waiting on results.

The Professional Player to Coach Scheme is aimed at increasing the numbers of Black, Asian, and Mixed Heritage players who transition into full-time coaching roles in the professional game.

It is a joint programme from the Premier League, the PFA and EFL with 32 coaches who have been employed with the scheme in full-time employment. The Premier League also runs the Coach Inclusion and Diversity Scheme to provide opportunities for coaches from under-represented backgrounds. Through both programmes, 75 coaches are in full-time employment with clubs.

Former Charlton defender Osei Sankofa is now head of coaching pathways at the Premier League, working across both schemes, which he believes have been successful.

“I think it’s extremely difficult to become a coach in English professional football,” he said.

“A lot of people had dreams of being a player at some point and when people realise that might not happen, going into coaching might seem like a logical option.

“Depending on your ambition, that can make it more tricky. There’s jobs at various levels, but it’s definitely a long road.”

When I put to him the numbers of managers at academy level of Premier League clubs, Sankofa said he is hopeful that will improve.

“That’s exactly why we’ve got the scheme. To start to improve some of those numbers,” he said.

“There are coaches who have been given more and more responsibility as a result of their time through our development programme and their experience within the clubs.

“We would hope to see and definitely think that those numbers would change over time. They’ll fluctuate up and down, but we certainly expect to see some improvement as we move forward to the future.”

The EFL points to its iRecruit hiring system as a way of creating progress in the area, which has seen 380 candidates appointed to academy coaching positions and which the EFL says 67 out of 72 clubs are using.

“All they’ll see is their coaching experience and their experience within the working environment and their qualifications,” said the EFL’s director of equality, diversity and inclusion David McArdle.

“So it allows people to have no unconscious bias if there is potentially that there and everybody to be kind of presented based on their skills and based on their experience that they have.”

When contacted by Sky Sports News to discuss this topic, the League Managers’ Association (LMA) said: “The LMA continues to call on the FA to significantly increase the pool of individuals from under-represented groups with the mandatory UEFA qualifications and provide funding for individuals to help them obtain their qualifications.

“The LMA has called for the FA and the leagues to enhance compulsory recruitment and employment regulations, removing the barriers to employment for individuals from under-represented groups, as well as removing bias from, and increasing transparency in, recruitment. Only by doing this can access to employment be a truly level playing field.”

In response, the FA insists it has made strong progress in increasing under-represented groups on the journey to coaching. It says it is committed to creating more opportunities to nurture and support coaches. And it told us it has helped over 100 coaches from under-represented groups through their partially funded places scheme, providing course costs, which includes UEFA ‘A’ and UEFA Pro Licences.

I am reminded of my conversation with Davies, who – with his FA hat on – said: “You cannot underestimate how difficult it is to unite all stakeholders in football around one idea.”

In this case, he means the FA’s diversity code. But the sentiment applies to the issue of Black managers in English football.

What will spark change?

Undoubtedly, more than ever is being done in this area. Schemes, initiatives, recruitment are all being looked at across the game.

But what will create change? From my conversations with those involved in Against the Odds, three areas stand out.

1. Networking/connections

The data is currently against Black managers. So if opportunities are not arising as organically as one would hope, it shows the importance of keeping a network in the game and building connections for post-playing.

2. Data

Data puts the pressure on. You cannot argue with statistics. The more data collected on this issue will keep pushing key stakeholders to act.

3. Boardrooms

Having Black board members does not mean Black managers will suddenly start being hired. But more diversity of thinking upstairs will certainly provide more allies in this area.

4. Chances

It may sound obvious, but Black managers need more chances. Why they are not, we have seen, is up for debate. But what we know is there are enough Black-qualified coaches waiting for an opportunity to show what they can do.

Against the Odds: Black Managers in English football is available to watch on Sky Sports YouTube and across Sky Sports channels.