“Some people still believe that if you’re good enough, you’ll get an opportunity. But that is the biggest fallacy out there,” says Ricky Hill as he ruminates on the shameful lack of black coaches and executives across professional football. “There is a system in place and it refuses to change.”
We are in Hill’s living room in Bedfordshire, a short drive from Kenilworth Road where he made his name as a sublime and cerebral midfielder for Luton in the 80s. There were international caps too, with Hill becoming the fourth black player to win an England cap and the first of south Asian heritage. But when he decided to go into management in the early 90s, he found baked-in prejudices, an old boys’ network and too many closed doors.
