Right on cue, Paul Ince highlights the issue of racism in the English game. By criticising English football chairmen for their failure to offer Black British managers the opportunity to work at higher levels, he bravely confronts one example of the extensive racism in the English game. He generously suggests that it may be "a generational thing". It's not. It's a racism thing and Paul Ince is diplomatic not to tread on our white sensibilities.
At the lower echelons of the game, there are a healthy number of players and agents from Afro-Caribbean, African and South American backgrounds. But the higher up the power hierarchy one travels, the whiter it becomes. Football reflects the society in which it operates and the overwhelming whiteness of power in England is startling. Think boxing, cricket, rugby, in fact virtually any sport that one wishes to select and the same racist hierarchy exists. Similarly in politics, business, the media, education, the Civil Service, the police, the military... England is not alone. Throughout Europe the same race-based pyramids exist often with the unwelcome addition of rampant racism on the terraces. UEFA and FIFA develop a few tokenistic marketing campaigns and yet Blatter didn't censure Blokhin or Aragones for their racism prior to last year's World Cup.
Each time I return to England, the meritocratic apartheid is painfully evident. It makes me squirm.
Paul Ince to manage England after MacLaren!!!
