Welcome to my blog with a slight holiday spirit, and to the start of a new football season. There are plenty of disputable facts, and even more possible serious omissions in this article, so fellow football enthusiasts please do pitch in with additions, corrections and debate. You may have fellow football followers who might also be interested in this, so please do forward.
The big Football Blog
I don’t have many obsessions, but football, numbers and ethnicity are three of them. I have tried – unsuccessfully – not to have too many football references in this blog, so at the start of a new season I want to group together a few reflections on the intersection of football and ethnicity. It’s the summer break, so for some readers this might provide a little light reading; for others, it can be one less thing to have to give attention to.
1. English football has been bi-racial not multi-racial until recently.
English football has not had a strong ethnic mix – see the comparison with several European countries at ‘4’ below. Migration over the past forty years from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and eastern Europe has made surprisingly little impact on the pitch. Instead virtually all ‘minority ethnic’ footballers have had Caribbean roots, with a disproportionately large number having black Caribbean/white British parentage. Why? One often neglected fact is that usually it takes a few decades before migrants’ families adjust to British norms. Traditionally football has been a fairly risky path to the slight possibility of eventual success. Migrant families tend to play safe in their career options, whilst traditionally professional football has been very much a working class occupation, with people of Caribbean background having had longer to move into that cultural zone than other groups.
2. But the West (and Central) Africans are coming.
The sudden emergence of footballers with African backgrounds within the last decade has been startling, showing a similar trickle-to-flood process like that of Caribbean background players in the early 80s. This may reflect that football has developed a more ‘professional’ culture over the past decade, which may fit better with the outlook of many West African families. Allegedly Bukayo Saka had more GCE ‘A’s than the rest of the Euro 2020 squad combined. However the transition from strong representation in age-specific England youth teams has (with the exception of Bukayo Saka, and possibly Joe Gomez) much slower. The struggles at Chelsea of the African-background players Callum Hudson-Odoi, FikayoTomori and Tammy Abraham to establish themselves may indicate the problems of moving into the full national team. Nonetheless there has been a marked shift – two of the ‘top six’ teams now field English Congolese background right backs (Wan Bissaka at Man Utd; and Tottenham’s own Japhet Tanganga). It is worth noting that this is not pan-African – three years ago four main West African nations had provided 131 Premier League players, as opposed to 4 coming from the nations that conversely had dominated world long distance running: Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia. Africa, like other continents, has enormous physical and cultural differences across its reach.
3. South Asians are not coming.
In November 2017, by a neat coincidence the England football and cricket teams played on the same day. By a far neater coincidence the cricket eleven had four players of South Asian background, none of Caribbean background; the football team lined up with four Caribbean background players, none with South Asian roots. For those who are ideologically committed to believing that all ethnic groups are really very similar and that outcome differentials show the result of (structural?) societal racism, this is an enigma. To anyone who has actually visited a park in a racially diverse area like Wembley this is no surprise. South Asian background young people just choose to play cricket; black young people just choose to play football. There are most likely minor currents of racist assumptions and expectations also swirling around, but the dominant factor is that of irreducible, independent and specific sub-cultural choices. It is interesting how many Koreans now travel up Tottenham High Road when Spurs are at home to watch Son Heung Min, but I doubt his ‘role modelling’ will show up on Premier League pitches in twenty years time.
4. It is different in Europe.
The traditionally bi-racial nature of English football contrasts strongly with the wide ethnic diversity of several European national teams – France, Belgium and Switzerland especially.
* The French World Cup winning squad back in 1998 had players from West & North Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, Armenia and the Basque area of Spain.
* Their World Cup squad in 2018 included 12 players with sub-Saharan African backgrounds, plus two North Africans – most likely a consequence that French policy both in their Colonies and now in France was much more ‘integrationist’ than Britain.
* Even more startling was the Swiss 2018 World Cup squad, which featured players with roots in Nigeria, Kosovo, Ivory Coast, Croatia, Macedonia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chile, Bosnia, Albania and Congo.
* Players of Ghanaian background have played for Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain and France (Boateng, Alaba, Balotelli, Williams, Desailly) yet despite our historic colonial and Commonwealth links, not Ghanaian has as yet played for England’s national squad.
5. Football is a diasporic game.
The American psychologist and ‘public intellectual’ Steven Pinker said that baseball is a great agent of integration. Football is even better as a means of gathering people from very different ethnic backgrounds into a common identity. (I really believe that if soccer was America’s favourite sport Donald Trump would not have been elected President). Three of the ‘all-star’ eleven chosen from this summer’s Euros have ‘diasporic’ backgrounds – Sterling (Jamaica/England), Pogba (Guinea/France), Shaqiri (Kosovo/Switzerland). So even the most football-phobic reader should mutter a silent prayer of thanks for football’s integrating capabilities - which are more substantial than the negative impact of understandably publicised instances of racist behaviour.
6. Going back to your roots?
You are 27. You are playing for Rotherham United. You are doing ok, but realistically any hopes of playing for England have long gone. But your grandmother comes from Barbados. Why not contact the Barbados FA and offer service to the national team? The Grenada FA have been resourceful in recruiting English players with Grenadian roots, but they seem to be alone in doing so amongst Caribbean islands. It is well known that the relatively successful Algerian national team (remember that mind-numbing 0-0 draw with England at the 2010 World Cup) consists mostly of players born in France and playing for French clubs but from Algerian families. Are there reasons why this doesn’t work out for players in the English leagues with Caribbean roots playing for Caribbean national sides?
7. The big question – why so few black managers?
First, the elephant in the room. The English can’t manage. At the 2010 & 2014 World Cups there were handfuls of managers from German, Dutch and Italian backgrounds, but not a single Englishman. Apart from Frank Lampard’s brief stint at Chelsea, no Englishman has managed a ‘top six’ team in recent times. It is not, contrary to Sam Allardyce’s allegation, because there is prejudice against English managers. Quite simply management at the very highest level hasn’t fitted with English football culture, which until recently shared the English vice of over-valuing pragmatism and experience over against abstract thinking, flavoured by a reverse snobbery against anything theoretical seen as too ‘middle-class’. There is still a tendency to think of being a manager as being an up-grade from being a player, as opposed to managing being a different sort of job where top-level playing experience can be useful - Guardiola, Pochetino, but not essential - Klopp, Mourinho, Wenger. (I think there is a genuine parallel with the different skill sets required of a vicar and a bishop meaning that here also the linkage between the two jobs and confidence in predicting effectiveness is by no means simple).
The consequence is that to say that the absence of black British football managers means that there is racism in the system is not as clear as is usually thought. Black players success on the pitch should not lead us to automatically expect their presence as managers on the touchline (which is what Raheem Sterling implied to Emily Maitlis on tv last summer). They are different jobs requiring different capabilities. In fact, non-English ‘black’ managers are not uncommon. Nuno Espirito Sancto has been given the high profile job at Spurs. Patrick Viera has been appointed at Crystal Palace, and when Arsene Wenger left Arsenal he was one of the four (all non-English) people in the frame for the job. Now West Brom have appointed – almost from nowhere – the Guadaloupian/Frenchman Valerien Ismael. Meanwhile in Spain – with a more racist tradition than England - the world’s most prestigious club, Real Madrid, have been happy to twice employ an Algerian, Muslim background manager, the great Zinedine Zidane. Top level football management is high profile, high risk. Clubs will appoint anyone who seems likely to give them success.
This is not to say that there are no currents of racism tugging back potential black managers, nor that the recent proposals of the Football Leadership Diversity Code won’t be of any use, but it is to argue that (as with the Church of England’s ‘From Lament to Action’ proposals) the eventual impact may disappoint their proponents because there has been insufficient realisation of the importance of social class and managerial competency in shaping who rises to leadership. Premier League clubs, unlike Anglican dioceses, are wholly independent entities and so can’t spread out top leadership opportunities in ethnic proportions. They are in an intensely competitive environment. They will choose managers on no other basis than the absolute requirement of delivering success.