Suella Braverman’s ludicrous football intervention

Talking nonsense about football is a lucrative and growing business, hence the explosion in podcasts in which former players exchange inanities about the game. A surprising new entrant to this festival of footballing gibberish – a right winger fresh from the subs’ bench, so to speak – is Suella Braverman. The former Conservative home secretary, who joined Reform UK in January, has called on the Football Association to scrap its ‘woke’ diversity and inclusion policies. She wrote to the FA’s chief executive, Mark Bullingham, this week claiming its strategy was ‘fundamentally flawed, inherently racist and bad for the game’ because ‘the best coaches should get the job, not because of their skin colour, but because they are the best person for the job.’

But that’s broadly what happens in football anyway, which is a genuine meritocracy. The best players rise to the top, the best managers get the best jobs and they’re sacked pretty pronto if they’re not up to the task. It is an altogether ludicrous intervention from Braverman. The target of her ire is the FA’s equality, diversity and inclusion target (EDI), announced in 2024, aiming for 30 per cent of coaches for England men’s and women’s teams at all age groups to be from ethnically diverse backgrounds by 2028, with a minimum of 25 per cent.

The FA is right to push back against Braverman, pointing out that it is proud of its strategy, adding: ‘Football has the unique ability to break down barriers and bring communities together…This means opening up pathways and creating opportunities for people from all backgrounds – including those from historically underrepresented groups. While we always take a meritocratic approach by appointing the best people for roles, we also recognise the importance of having a broader range of participants across the sport.’

The last sentence is key – it is still about appointing the ‘best people’ at the end of the day. The FA is merely setting a target, an aspiration, not a quota. What is so terribly wrong with the sport’s governing body doing more to help ensure coaching programmes and other pathways spot and develop any neglected talent? Criticising the FA for its efforts to make football management and coaching more of a level playing field in the longer term is misguided and ignorant. The national game has long been criticised for having a much smaller proportion of people from ethnic minorities in coaching and leadership positions compared with the number playing the game. Data published in 2024 by the Black Footballers Partnership found that while 43 per cent of Premier League players were black, a far lower number reached senior coaching and managerial positions (just 4 per cent). It is surely worth asking what might be behind this, and whether more can be done to improve the numbers.

Bill Shankly, the legendary Liverpool manager, famously said: ‘Some people think football is a matter of life and death; I don’t like that attitude. I can assure them it is much more serious than that.’ The game certainly deserves better than Reform politicians looking for an easy target.  This is opportunism, pure and simple, creating division merely for the sake of it. Braverman should stick to politics.