by floyd__streete »
15 Oct 2014 14:05
How do you know it exists? You assume it exists. These sort of pre-determined attitudes makes a mockey of any campaign for inclusivity. It puts pressure on any investigation to find in a certain way.
No-one would have an issue with an investigation into the lack of representation of BME coaches in football management roles. Who undertakes the investigation? How do they investigate? What evidence exactly are they evaluating? How open do we intend to be with the findings? You’ve got to have governance as soon as you say ‘SOMETHING MUST BE DONE’! The most obvious way would be to be to interview all UEFA/FIFA licenced BME coaches, ask what evidence they have of discrimination (in general terms and in terms of employment). Of course, much of that evidence could be supposition and hearsay but it would be good to break down some barriers.
Now it gets trickier. Resulting from any investigation, how do we go about implementing any proposals? Who pays for it? Cash strapped League 2 clubs shelling out to ensure a box ticking exercise is completed? Do we get set targets? Say 15 BME managers in post in top jobs within the 92 clubs by 2018? We already have that of course. Oh, sorry I mean 15 managers with black skin. What a shame, we reached our target by December 2018 but by March 2019 2 had been sacked. This in itself must be investigated!
These reservations alone are no reason not to have some sort of investigation into it of course, as long as there is no pre-determined barely-concealed attitude at the outset that (to quote you) the reality is that discrimination exists. Football is different to any other industry, there are no promotion boards or KPIs. It would be good to get any blockages into coaching roles sorted....but it would be good to get those blockages sorted for every candidate, of course. What about the dyslexic who might get overlooked (Harry Redknapp is your Champion)? What about the very capable coach who gets overlooked because he is homosexual?