Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
SKIN COLOUR IS STILL A BLOCK ON TOP JOBS
PAUL INCE fears his son Tom could be part of yet another generation of lost black bosses with so few opportunities in the game.
When Ince became England’s first black captain in 1993, Keith Alexander was becoming the first black manager in the Football League since Rochdale’s Tony Collins in 1967.
Twenty-five years on, the English game still has only a handful of its 92 clubs managed by people of colour.
Ince, whose 26-year-old son Tom plays for Stoke, said: “I hate talking about race. Hate it. But I’m still amazed that, in the 21st century, people still can’t get a job because of the colour of their skin.
“That is where we are. if you look at the next generation of ex-pros – the Zahas, the Townsends, even my son Thomas – are they going to say, ‘Right, I want to be a coach, I want to be a manager, but I don’t see the avenue for me to do that?’
“And if they don’t, are they going go into punditry or even something else? “Because, if that’s the case, then you’ll be losing even more potential managers from the game.”
A two-time title winner with Manchester United, Ince – a pundit with BT Sport and Sky – had spells in charge of Macclesfield and MK Dons before becoming England’s first black Premier League boss at Blackburn in June 2008.
Out of work since leaving Blackpool in 2014, he added: “They had the lowest budget in the Championship. I got them to third in the table. When they sacked me, I’d got them to 13th in the table. My win ratio was around 46 per cent.
“That’s better than most managers. I went to Macclesfield and kept them up. I went to MK Dons and won promotion.
“I went to Blackburn and it didn’t work and people focus on that. English football has a habit of doing that with black managers. There are loads of people out there who make mistakes and keep getting job after job after job.
“We had a conversation two years ago about the Rooney Rule and how we were going to implement that into our game. Today, it’s been swept under the carpet.
“What concerns me is that, if you look at black players now – the England senior squad, the Under-21s, Under-19s – they’re full of black players.
“Somehow, before their retirement age, we must find a solution. So, when they finish playing, they can feel they can go into coaching and management.”