Seven days before Patrick Vieira was sacked by Crystal Palace, the 46-year-old was asked if he saw himself as a role model for other black coaches. As the solitary minority manager in the Premier League, and just the tenth in three decades, the former Arsenal midfielder said “if I manage to inspire I’m really proud and happy.”
That same week Jermain Defoe, with more than 300 club goals and 57 England caps, launched a podcast in which he will delve into his path towards coaching, while the Black Footballers’ Partnership (BFP) released a report detailing that representation levels in off-field roles remains “remarkably low.”
The numbers presented are damning, pointing to a bottleneck that the authorities’ commitment to widening is somewhere between questionable and barely existent.
