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  • 5 minutes

Broken Pipeline for Black Coaches in World Football

Updated Friday, 25 October 2024

With ‘Reclaiming Narratives’ the theme for Black History Month 2024, I watched the players of African heritage showcase their talents in the Nottingham Forest v Fulham Premier League fixture in September 2024 (Calvin Bassey, Taiwo Awoniyi, Alex Iwobi and Ola Aina), but pondered if they would be given the same opportunities as their white counterparts if they decided in the future to become football coaches/managers in the UK or Europe? 

This content is associated with The Open University's Sport and Fitness courses and qualifications.

So why is the representation of Black football players in coaching and management positions not as prevalent as white players? The following animation explores this topic: 

Transcript (PDF document60.3 KB) .

Acknowledgements and references

Acknowledgements
Daniel Browne - production
Olayemi Fadoju - voice over
Dale Harry - script editor 

Jim Lusted - script editor 
Marcus Young - production
References  
Bradbury, S., Lusted, J., & van Sterkenburg, J. (Eds.). (2020). 'Race', Ethnicity and Racism in Sports Coaching (first edition). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367854287.

Diversity in English professional football 2022: https://www.statista.com/aboutus/our-research-commitment.

Duffey, D.E (2018), It's No Secret, it's Racism.

Szymanski, S (2023), Black Representation in English Professional Football: A Statistical Analysis: https://shorturl.at/xkIYi.

 

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