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| Chris Powell Manager of Charlton Athletic |
Norwich City’s Chris Hughton, Charlton Athletic’s Chris Powell and Paul Ince at Blackpool are the exception, across all 92 professional clubs. In the light that 25 per cent of the English game’s 4,500 professional players are from ethnic minorities, it makes grim statistics, if you are a retired black player contemplating a career in football management.
There has been much naval gazing about whether English Football should adopt the Rooney Rule to remedy this imbalance. This concept, pioneered across the Atlantic in American National Football League (NFL), compels teams in the NFL to interview at least one black or ethnic minority for head coach positions within the game. It’s no surprise to many that since the Rooney Rule was established in 2003 - the number of black coaches within the NFL has more than doubled.
I am sure it is not beyond the wit of the FA and the Football League to adopt a similar approach tailored to fit our national sport. Critics may say this is positive discrimination or see it as mere tokenism.
However, if this doctrine were implemented, it would only guarantee an interview – an opportunity to pitch for a job. The added bonus would be that it would broaden the thought-processes of chairmen and owners of football clubs to look beyond the same old faces who are on the managerial merry-go-round. It’s about time that we shatter this cartel and open up managerial opportunities for all rather than the chosen few.
It is early days yet in the fledgling careers of Hughton, Powell and Ince. But what they have displayed in their short tenures as football managers, is that appointing a young, keen, qualified black manager is no more of a risk to a football club than hiring the same managerial type from the same gene pool that the club got the last manager from.
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