And while we’re at it...

‘YOU’RE a distinguished footballer,’ Trevor Phillips told Les Ferdinand as part of a Channel 4 documentary last week. ‘You had a great career, an international, you’re respected in the game. How many times have you been tapped up to be considered as a first-team coach?’ Ferdinand said once. When he came out of football, he revealed, he was contacted by the chairman of Bournemouth. ‘So, in the seven years since you retired you’ve been talked to about a management vacancy once, and that by an owner who himself was not white,’ Phillips added. ‘That tells a story, doesn’t it?’ Yes and no. Phillips’ programme was called

Things We Won’t Say About Race That Are True. It was well received. Yet were a programme called Things We Won’t Say About Les

Ferdinand That Are True to be made, it might reveal that at Tottenham Hotspur, where he was employed as a coach, he was perceived by senior management figures to lack the all-consuming commitment to the game of contemporaries such as Chris Ramsey and Tim Sherwood. Ferdinand (below) may feel that judgment harsh — and no side is being taken here either way — but as Ramsey is black and Sherwood white, it was not a call based on skin colour. There are not enough black coaches in English football — but to take the case of one man and say because he had an international career he should be inundated with offers is a weak argument. Not all great players make great coaches; not all have the commitment required to run a club. Ferdinand is now director of football at Queens Park Rangers. Time will tell whether the rest of the game missed a trick.