Diversity in football

IT WAS an incredible occasion when England won the women’s Euro 2022 Championships in July.

A record-breaking crowd of 87,192 erupted when Chloe Kelly poked home the winner in extra time. Images of her celebration and of captain Leah Williamson lifting the trophy will live long in the memory, as will the image of the team photograph before the start of the match.

All of England’s starting 11 players were white. In fact, there were only three black players – Jess Carter, Nikita Parris and Demi Stokes – and there were no Asians in the Lionesses squad.

Compare that to France, who had 15 ethnic minority players.

It was only a few years ago that the England women’s team had iconic non-white players. Rachel Yankey captained her country, playing 129 games. Alex Scott and Eniola Aluko played 140 games each and Anita Asante, 71 games.

The number of British Asian professionals in the top division of women’s football stands at a paltry 0.3 per cent. That is despite south Asian women making up the largest single ethnic minority female group in the country.

Worryingly, when asked, the Football Association (FA) was unable to provide any ethnicity data on diverse representation within girls’ and women’s elite pathways in the game.

Manisha Tailor, assistant head of academy coaching at QPR and the only south Asian woman to hold such a role in the game, said this week that elite women’s pathways in English football lacked diversity.

Tailor is hoping to inspire young south Asians to forge careers in the game with her book Dream Like Me: South Asian Football Trailbazers, which was released this week. It profiles the story and struggles of 42 British Asians working in the game in a variety of different roles.

The FA need to work with community leaders such as Tailor and make a concerted effort to put strategies in place to address the anomaly.

Sporting talent exists among girls and women in British Asian communities, but the FA and clubs need to be culturally sensitive, help them overcome barriers, and develop pathways, to tap into this market.