Rooney Rule is adopted for England job

FA will interview at least one BAME candidate Premier League urged by Glenn to follow suit

Gareth Southgate’s successor as England manager will be chosen from a shortlist including at least one black and ethnic minority (BAME) candidate, the Football Association has announced.

Martin Glenn, the chief executive, said the organisation is unilaterally introducing the “Rooney Rule”, which will now apply to appointing coaches across all age groups, backroom staff and the England manager.

Glenn urged the Premier League to follow suit. “I think in talking to people at the Premier League and the FA, I don’t see any resistance to it and, to be fair, the EFL [English Football League] has a Rooney Rule in place,” Glenn said. “I’d just say it’s not enough on its own. It’s a necessary condition.”

The Rooney Rule is a policy drawn from the NFL in American football that requires the league’s 32 teams to interview BAME candidates for head coaching and senior roles. The rule was named after Dan Rooney, the NFL diversity committee chairman, and there have been calls for it to be made mandatory in English football. It has been applied in the English Football League since Jan 1 and was introduced in academies last June.

The FA’S use of the rule will be extended to the assistants and coaching staff appointed by the manager of the England men’s senior team. He cannot just choose who he wants. “It will absolutely apply,” Glenn said. “I think the Rooney Rule on its own isn’t enough. All the other programmes about building the pipeline of talented young BAME coaches are also important at the same time.”

In November, Sports People’s Think Tank said that just 22 of the 482 coaching roles in top four divisions were held by BAME coaches. There are just five managers and only one, Chris Hughton at Brighton, in the Premier League.

“We’re doing this for two reasons,” Glenn said. “In soft terms, because it is the right thing to do but there is also a business case for it. If your management team reflects more the people that you are serving then you’re going to make correct decisions. What we’re seeing now is more BAME players and what we want to do is make sure that, post their playing career, there’s an opportunity for them to carry on contributing and that they feel the FA is also for them.”

The announcement came as part of a raft of new measures from the FA that also included setting up an “on-board” programme to encourage former England players to work within the organisation. Two to three former players a year will be selected. In detailing the FA’S wider plans for this year, Glenn confirmed that for the remainder of the season he will work with Baroness Sue Campbell, the FA’S director of women’s football, as she leads work to improve the culture of the England women’s team.

Glenn said that women in sport will not “put up with” so-called “banter” in the same way as men as he announced a new grievance procedure at the ruling body.

In light of the Eniola Aluko case – which the FA stressed was in no