Byfield to keep knocking on door for black bosses
The report looked at off-the-pitch careers of about 3,500 former footballers who played in the Premier League or Championship between 1990 and 2010 and found that, during that period, non-black players were 50% more likely to get into management than black players. Delroy Corinaldi, executive director of BFP, said: "A career in football management often looks like a game of Snakes and Ladders, but for black former players, it's pretty much all snakes and no ladders. " As recently as last September, following the sacking of Nuno by Nottingham Forest, there were no black managers in the English top flight for the first time since between March and August 2023.
At the time, anti-discrimination charity Kick It Out said the English game was at risk of "losing a generation of coaches from a black, Asian or mixed heritage background". Since then Nuno has returned to management at West Ham United and, in January, Chelsea brought in former Hull City boss Liam Rosenior on a five-and-a-half-year contract from their sister club in France's Ligue 1, Strasbourg. In a bid to increase diversity in senior leadership, team operations and coaching roles at clubs, the Football Association (FA) launched the Football Leadership Diversity Code initiative in 2020, with more than 50 clubs, including 19 from the Premier League, signing up to the scheme.
However, although the FA said progress had been made it the first three years, the rate had been "slower than hoped". Byfield's route into management began in non-league football with spells at Redditch United, Stratford Town, Walsall Wood and Alvechurch. He said the relatively sheltered environment of the lower leagues shaped his identity as a coach.
"I had to train probably once a week on a third of a pitch, so you couldn't even get your ideas across," he said. "But it helped me, shaped me. I was allowed to make mistakes and it wouldn't be publicised.
And it's a big thing. "What came out of that was I knew exactly how I wanted to play. I knew exactly what kind of players I wanted in my team.