The thought of becoming a coach had never entered the teenage Rhys Denton’s mind until he came across a magazine article about Noel Blake, who was then managing an England Under-19s side that included Harry Kane and Nathan Redmond.
“I didn’t even consider it because I didn’t know there were coaches who looked like me,” says Denton, now 32 and in charge of Reading’s under-15s academy side. “But when I saw that Noel was coaching in the England setup and having a massive influence on young black players who were making the breakthrough for their clubs at the time, I thought to myself: ‘If I can’t make it in football as a player, I want to be that coach.’ If you can visualise yourself in a job, it gives you something to aim for.”
Yet while Denton – a former academy player at Oxford United who started coaching when he was 24 – hopes to one day become a manager within the professional game, a report released this past week by the Black Footballers Partnership (BFP) shows that the odds remain stacked against him.
Only 4.4% of management-related positions in English football are held by black employees, with Reading’s Paul Ince and Crystal Palace’s Patrick Vieira – the only black person to be leading a club in the top flight of men’s or women’s football in England – two of a handful employed as a manager.
The statistics from the report compiled by Prof Stefan Szymanski are even more stark further down the pyramid: only three out of 68 new roles in League Two went to black employees, compared with 11 out of 165 new roles at Championship level.
“Something is not right because it doesn’t add up – we’ve lost a generation of managers,” says Blake, who now works as a consultant and mentors black and Asian coaches for the FA. “For whatever reason, so many former black players have had short stints in coaching and then walked away or chose not to get involved in the first place.
“If you feel you have a chance of succeeding then you will give it a try but it seems that hasn’t been the case. Sometimes I think a lot of black coaches are being denied the opportunity to even apply for roles because the jobs are going to the same old faces.”
Denton, who also works as a coach developer for the FA, adds: “There are so many talented young black coaches who are hungry to get into the game. But I could reel off many of them who are out of football right now or looking for a better job than they’ve got. These are hard-working black coaches who have experience at the highest level that should put them on a level playing field with the other people who are moving from club to club.”
While there was a slight increase in the overall number of management-related positions held by black employees compared with last year, the BFP argues that there has been “no real change” and the career ladder for black players is “missing rungs” despite the introduction of the Football Associations’s football leadership diversity code in 2020. Its last report in October insisted “clubs continue to exceed the target for recruitment of senior BAME [black, Asian and minority ethnic] coaches” – a claim that was described by the BFP and its members as “optimistic”.
An FA spokesperson told the Observer that officials “strongly reject any suggestion that the published data is either vague or misleading. While we are making positive and tangible progress, through our evidence-led approach, we also recognise that more can be done by everyone in the game and that substantive change will take time. We will continue to work with our stakeholders in English football to develop and grow in this critical area.”
Established in October, the BFP was invited to discuss its report with MPs at a meeting chaired by Diane Abbott this past week and the executive director, Delroy Corinaldi, is hopeful their voice will be heard. “It was a serious discussion about the way forward and what we need to do,” he says.
However, for Denton, it is a question of old habits dying hard. “We have to look into the way that people are being recruited,” he says. “There has to be a system that is based on competence and not who you are or who you know. Those are the real habits that we are looking to eradicate from the game.
“The step forward now is being able to identify good people and more readily weigh up the risks. I’ve got no doubts that if an employer was to look at my competence and compare it to other coaches then we’d be looking at a more even keel. But I don’t think that happens – I don’t think they are willing to take that risk.”
Blake is justifiably proud of his pioneering role within England’s youth system that meant he coached 18 of England’s 23-man squad at the 2018 World Cup in Russia at some stage of their careers. Despite leaving in 2014, part of the former Leeds defender’s legacy was also the introduction in 2018 by the FA and the Professional Footballers’ Association of the elite coaching placement programme, which committed to offering opportunities “to BAME individuals with a view to increasing diversity throughout top level football” and has benefited several black coaches including Chris Powell, who is part of Gareth Southgate’s staff with the England men’s senior team.
“There’s mileage in it,” says Blake. “I often wonder how many black lads were lost in our system because some coaches didn’t understand there can be cultural differences.”
But Denton believes “the real success lies in people wanting us to be there” and not being placed in a job because regulations require it. “It’s pleasing to see that the FA and the Premier League are trying to do something about it,” he says.
“But the fact they have been trying for a while and there has not really been any change in recruitment behaviours is a little bit uninspiring. I’m hopeful that opportunities will arrive and if I get the chance to give a good account of myself in an interview process then I’ve got confidence that I could be successful in obtaining a role. But those opportunities will not come up without everybody being willing to engage with somebody like me.”
