The FA’s second annual report on the Football Leadership Diversity Code has shown that not enough black, Asian and mixed heritage candidates have been appointed to senior management and coaching roles in the men’s game, while highlighting a decrease in female coaches in the women’s sport.
The landmark code was first introduced in October 2020. It now has more than 60 signatories. Premier League clubs, 32 EFL clubs, The FA, Premier League, EFL, Barclays Women’s Super League and Barclays Women’s Championship.
It was introduced to “ensure English football better represents our modern society, focusing on increasing equality of opportunity to encourage recruitment of diverse talent across senior leadership teams, team operations and coaching setups”, in the words of the FA.
The report 2021-22 highlights many areas of progress with the FA, Premier League, and EFLSeven of the eight campaign targets were met with strong results. It was also evident that there was an increase in recruitment shortlists with black, Asian, mixed heritage female candidates. The numbers of diverse male candidates also increased.
But it also highlighted that English clubs are failing to meet their pledged targets, with the chair of Kick It Out, Sanjay Bhandari, acknowledging the report left “plenty of room for improvement”.
“Two years into the process, now is a good time for pause and reflection across the industry, to share learnings and best practice,” he added.
“Collectively, that will enable us to increase the pace of change.”
This report shows that only 10.3% of those who were hired to lead English clubs’ senior leadership positions came from a background of black, Asian, or mixed heritage. This is significantly lower than the target of 15%.
Only 17.2% of the recent hires were women, which is still below the target of 30%.
In the meantime, clubs were aiming to hire 25 percent of new coaches with a background of black, Asian or mixed heritage, but only 15.6% were actually hired.
Positive results were also seen in the recruitment of senior coaches, where the 10% target was met. 21.2% of senior coach hires are either of mixed or black heritage.
Women’s clubs however failed to hit their 50 per cent target that all new coaches hired would be female. In fact, 33.3 percent of those hired were women.
Mark Bullingham, the FA’s chief executive, said: “I would like to thank everybody involved for supporting the Football Leadership Diversity Code, as part of a collective desire to create meaningful change.
“This year shows some signs of progress, with a shift in recruitment processes that will start to change the game and the three governing bodies exceeding seven out of eight targets.
“However, while we saw clubs exceeding diversity targets for senior coaches in the men’s game and coaches in the women’s game, there is still a huge amount of work to be done across the game.
“We understand that substantive change will take time, but a number of clubs have already made progress, and we expect to see more clubs follow that lead in years to come.”
Premier League chief executive, Richard Masters, added: “Over the past two years, the Code has represented an important commitment from across football to tackle inequality and create long-term change.
“We are pleased to be making progress but there is still much more to be done to ensure there are opportunities at all levels of the workforce – this remains a priority for us.”
You can view the full report here Here.
(Photo: Getty Images).
