Major Disparities and Elite Football Managers: A Case Study. # 90. 27/09/2022
Out of Many, One People
Welcome. This week’s blog should not be seen as only for football enthusiasts. How disparities of outcome are best explained is a major issue of contention in how racism should be understood. This is an attempt to illustrate the issue from a very particular area of activity.
Major Disparities and Elite Football Managers: A Case Study.
Full marks to Chelsea for boldly appointing Graham Potter, a relatively inexperienced manager. And an Englishman! Over the past five years the English Premier League’s elite ‘top six’ (Arsenal, Chelsea Spurs, Man City, Man Utd & Liverpool) have had but one previous English manager – Frank Lampard’s brief stint at Chelsea. Which yields the staggering disparity that England’s elite teams over that period have been managed by actual Englishmen for less than 3% of the time. Not only Italians, Spaniards and Germans, but also Dutch, Portuguese and Norwegians, have had a bigger share than Englishmen; together filling the top roles in English football for 97% of the time. By any account this is a quite extraordinary disparity.
How to explain it? Ibram X Kendi, progressive black academic and author of ‘How to be an Anti-Racist’, offers two interpretations of the negative statistical disparities experienced by African Americans in the USA: either you attribute them to systemic racism or black inferiority. (Since no-one would blatantly affirm the latter, you have to choose the former).How do these two types of explanation play out with the marked disparities suffered by English football managers?
The ‘systemic’ argument has been made. Sam Allardyce, manager amongst many others of Everton and Crystal Palace, and briefly of England, has claimed that were his name to be italianised into ‘Alladici’ he would have been offered a top six post. Not many would agree with him. Football management (apart from its intrinsic interest to some of us) makes a very good case study since in an extremely competitive environment there are immensely different financial outcomes between capably managed teams as opposed to brilliantly managed teams, so that there is intense pressure on clubs to find the very best managers wherever they may be found. The result is that ‘unconscious bias’ in recruitment, which could lead to a highly talented manager being overlooked, bears a heavier penalty than in almost any other type of enterprise. The intense pressure to find the very best is the reason why managers get sacked so frequently, thus Manchester United’s multiple attempts to find a replacement for Sir Alex Ferguson.
So, if English football had been producing football managers of the very highest quality they would have risen to the surface by now. This is especially true at national level, where there is obvious pressure to find an English manager, yet we hadn’t found one for the 2010 0r 2014 World Cups.
If unconscious bias or systemic prejudice don’t account for the 3:97 shortfall of English managers, then the only other explanation (in Kendi’s terms) is racial ‘inferiority’ – or simply put, the English are a nation of losers. And that is true to a limited degree; that is, you narrow your focus away from the characteristics of the English people en masse, down to a very specific area of English life: the culture surrounding English football, and especially the culture of football management.
It is possible to identify several dysfunctional aspects that have marked the English approach to football management.
1. The impact of social class.
The outcome has been a traditional inverted snobbery that expects little in the way of quality from either the players or the environs of the game. Not only were stadiums expected to be run down and spectators expected to be content with poor food or toilets, but players were assumed to be red-blooded and vigorous more than tactically astute or skillful, and those who were more thoughtful off or on the pitch regarded with suspicion. Overall, the teams of other western European nations had more players with higher education or a more sophisticated approach to the game. When the Frenchman Arsene Wenger became manager of Arsenal (with little high level playing experience), his rigorous emphasis on a proper diet and his closing down the players bar sent out shock waves at a time when Paul Gascoigne’s heavy drinking and diet of Mars bars was often portrayed as the footballing norm.
The advent of the Premier League, rocketing tv revenues, higher priced tickets and more spectator friendly grounds have all changed the social context of English football to be more middle class, but this is only slowly affecting who plays at a top level, especially as success usually requires making a very risky and demanding career choice, with a very great possibility of disappointment, in the mid-teens. It will take even more time to affect who become managers.
2. Emphasis on pragmatism rather than theory.
As a result of this background, English football has exhibited a tendency that can be found in the wider society to value experience and pragmatism over theory. Thus, a stellar footballing career was often seen as a gateway to management, with the belief that this was a prerequisite for having the respect of the next generation of players. It led to frequent disappointments. When Kevin Keegan was English manager, it was joked that he thought ‘tactics’ was a type of sweet.
In fact, a significant number of top managers, such as Klopp or Mourinho, were undistinguished as players. The same is true of the two leading English managers, Eddie Howe and Graham Potter. But, more relevantly, elite managers have been keen to develop academic and theoretical credentials in a way unknown in English football a decade or so back. Klopp took a degree in Sports Science; Potter has a post-graduate qualification in Emotional Intelligence.
3. Emphasising ‘football’ rather than ‘manager’.
The job is essentially management. That is, it requires a rounded understanding that involves maximising players physical strength and emotional health, motivation, as well as sophisticated analysis of what is actually happening in a game; in other words, qualities of abstract intelligence and emotional maturity. A disproportionate number of successful managers (including England’s two most recent national managers – Hodgson and Southgate) are middle class. As noted above, being a successful player by no means predicates becoming a successful manager - one consequence is that it is erroneous to think that the high proportion of black footballers ought to lead to a high proportion of black managers. The two are very different occupations requiring very different abilities. It has often not been understood that being a good manager is essential; having been a good footballer far less important.
The cumulative effect of this nexus of negative features is that the overall culture of English football is less thoughtful, imaginative and innovative than that of the main European nations. As a result we are so far failing to produce exceptionally gifted managers. The situation is not written in stone. The recent appointments of Howe and Potter to highly ambitious and wealthy clubs indicates a potential reduction of the gross 3:97 disparity. But for positive change to happen it is the culture and managerial assumptions of English football that needs to change, rather than blaming the situation on unconscious bias or systemic discrimination against English managers.
How does this case study illuminate our understanding of disparities?
1. Major disparities are not uncommon. There are many areas aside from football management – and more important ones - where differences in outcome are stark.
2. Systemic factors, including racism, can be and often are important; simply that they are not always the major factor in play.
3. Cultures (and genders) very frequently have different preferences, which lead to different outcomes. Generally overseas Chinese are far less interested in politics than overseas Indians, and this shows up in political representation, without any need to ascribe it to external discrimination. This means attempts to get equality of outcome are invariably disappointed.
4. As a generalisation all cultures are strong in some areas, weak in others
5. Small differences can have major consequences. Within the possible global range of cultural difference, differences between the English and the Germans or Spaniards are not that major, yet the relatively small differences of culture and understanding in football management outlined above can have major knock-on differences further down the line in who gets to the top.
6. Low achievement in one area does not predicate low achievement in other, even quite congruent areas. The English apparently don’t (yet) make good elite football managers. It doesn’t mean they can’t make good managers (though some negative traits may be more widespread) in a host of other areas. Nor does it mean that the English aren’t able or competent people.
7. Cultures can change. This requires being clear-minded enough to identify and bold to correct dysfunctional characteristics, and being aware of the need to change. Indeed a common feature of all flourishing cultures has been their ability to learn from and incorporate features of other cultures.
The upshot of this is that for Ibram X Kendi and others to posit of alleged racial inferiority as the only alternative explanation to systemic racism as the cause of disparities of outcome is hopelessly over-simple. Ethnic groups under-perform (are ‘inferior’?) in specific areas in relation to others for a host of fine-tuned reasons without that giving cause to across-the-board generalisations about those groups. What is required is to assess what are the dysfunctional characteristics in any group, and how better alternatives can be identified and acquired
*********************
Resources
Webinar: The Churches’ engagement with the Police on critical incidents.
This Thursday 29 September 2022, 7.30 to 9pm. Hosted by the Racial Justice Advocacy Forum.
Following the fatal Metropolitan Police-related shooting of Chris Kaba in south London on 5 September 2022, churches and faith-based organisations have appealed for compassion and justice for a wounded community.
This webinar, hosted by The Racial Justice Advocacy Forum (RJAF), looks at how churches and parachurch groups have experience in working as conduits in communities that have been alienated from the police, and are able to offer support to those who are seeking to develop a dialogue around these concerns.
Join us on this webinar that aims to better equip churches and communities to respond to critical incidents, and to engage with the police to build a safer society.
‘Black and Human’
An online event exploring the connection between racial injustice and mental health - Tuesday 4 October 2022.Join us as we hear from mental health experts and pastoral leaders and explore together aspects of racial injustice and mental health. There will be keynote speakers, a panel discussion and the opportunity for Q & A.
Churches Together in England is running this event – on Tuesday 4 October from 7.30 to 9.30pm – in partnership with Kintsugi Hope and the One People Commission.
The R7 Update is a monthly blog of resources by an American church planter, Chris Hatch, who has worked in Britain. It is more wide ranging than its strap-line might suggest: The R7 Update ‘seeks to highlight the work of Reformed multiethnic churches which are welcoming to the poor in order to encourage church leaders to move in the direction God is taking his people’. Amongst the items referred to this month is an interview with Chine McDonald in Christianity today, and an article by David Livermore (of ‘Cultural Intelligence’) on ‘Four Questions for Navigating Difficult Conversations’.
The email address is R7Update@gmail.com.