Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
STAY UP? NORSE WE CAN
Parker has been so impressed with his on-loan Viking warrior Andersen that’s he’s already made him skipper
SCOTT PARKER believes he has found his own Viking leader to steer Fulham out of relegation trouble.
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PEP GUARDIOLA admits he has sympathy for Jurgen Klopp over the way Liverpool’s title defence has imploded.
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IT is a mantra trotted out time and time again – meaningful reform, meaningful change, has to start at the very top.
Yet leading football authorities remain as unrepresentative of the players and the fans as they have ever been.
Jason Lee hopes to take a step towards fixing that.
Lee wants to succeed Gordon Taylor (right) as the chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association.
Controversy has dogged the later period of Taylor’s 40 years in the role, but it remains one of the most important jobs in the English game.
Ben Purkiss and Jonathan Walters have put themselves forward for the job and have been joined by Lee, who made over 600 league appearances in a professional career that took him to Nottingham Forest, Watford and Peterborough before a finale in non-league.
Having worked for the PFA over the past decade, Lee knows the CEO has a very broad remit.
But with players increasingly subjected to online racist abuse, Lee is determined to fight discrimination in the sport.
He declared: “I will never shy away from tackling inequality head on. I will always challenge it.
“I’ve spoken regularly on racism and equality issues. And we need action.”
Well over 30 per cent of professional footballers come from Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, yet there is very little BAME representation in the corridors of power and influence.
And as the PFA’S Equalities and Education Executive, Lee, 49, has been at the forefront of its fight against discrimination.
“We had the Enough campaign in 2019, when we boycotted social media for 24 hours, and we also published a report highlighting racial bias within football commentary,” said Lee, who was named alongside Marcus Rashford, Troy Deeney and Tyrone Mings on the 2020 Football Black List to mark his contribution to BAME rights in the game. “But tackling these issues has only just begun. We cannot let up or ever take our eye off the issues.” Taylor’s long goodbye is finally coming to an end with potential successors asked to submit their applications by the end of this week.
Interviews will then take place next month and a shortlist will be presented to the membership for a ballot. As part of PFA reforms, the successful candidate will be on a small fraction of Taylor’s infamous £2million-a-year salary. Taylor’s supporters have always tried to justify his wage
packet by pointing to the deal which has given the PFA a slice of the Premier League’s TV rights package.
But in a challenging new era, the CEO role at the PFA is likely to be more demanding, with the blight of racial abuse and discrimination high on the agenda.
While playing for Forest in the Premier League in his early twenties, Lee was persistently pilloried by comics David Baddiel and Frank Skinner for, among other things, his hairstyle.
On the Fantasy Football TV show, Baddiel would ‘black up’ and put a pineapple on his head to mock Lee.
“Looking back , it was a form of bullying,” said Lee.
After being exposed to it as a player in the ’90s, Lee has made it one of his missions to fight racist abuse in the current era, along with championing the women’s game and continuing the urgent research into links between dementia and football.
He added: “I was known as a strong leader on the pitch and the PFA needs one off it.”