Shouldn't Matter if your Black or White

John Barnes will have a tale or two to tell when he attends the Black Coaches’ Forum in London tomorrow.

The former Liverpool winger’s sacking as Tranmere Rovers manager last week brought the number of black managers working among the 92 professional clubs in England back to two and reignited the debate about why the opportunities afforded to non-whites in coaching and management in this country still seem so thin on the ground.

Barnes, 45, would be the first to say that a record of eight defeats in 11 league games at the Coca-Cola League One club was not good enough, even if the severe financial limitations he was working under were often conveniently overlooked, but he must have justifiable cause to wonder if he will work in management again.

After an ill-fated spell at Celtic, it took Barnes nearly ten years before another club were willing to give him a second chance. How long will he have to wait before he gets a third roll of the dice? Twenty years?

How, for example, are lesser known black footballers than him expected to get their break if Barnes, arguably the most prominent black English footballer of his generation, found it so hard to get back into management?

And why should the more recent generation of black footballers, for whom the need to continue working is no longer as great as it was for their predecessors, bother subjecting themselves to such a demoralising process of rejection, when, as was the case with black players in the 1960s and 1970s, they seem to need to prove they are “ten times better” than their white counterparts?

Piara Powar director of football’s anti-racism campaign, Kick It Out, which launches its 2009 Weeks Of Action campaign on Thursday, and Bobby Barnes, the assistant chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association, feel the situation may improve if more black people enter the boardrooms of football clubs.

1 Jason Rockett, at Sheffield United, is the only black chief executive of the 92 professional clubs in England and Wales

2 The number of black managers presently working in professional football in England. Keith Alexander at Macclesfield Town and Paul Ince at MK Dons. Chris Hughton is only the caretaker manager at Newcastle United

17 The number of black managers in English football since the 1992-93 season

You would think the self-proclaimed best footballing nation wouldn't suffer from something so backward and disgusting as racism. Let's hope it changes.