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Al Jazeera asks why football coaches are still nearly all white

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  • Just three black managers at Africa Cup of Nations
  • Only two black managers at 2014 FIFA World Cup
  • No black managers at the beginning of the 2015 Premier League

Sport Matters: Too Black To Coach premieres on Al Jazeera English on Friday, 31 January 2014, asking why there are just three black managers at the current, 16-team Africa Cup of Nations; why there were only two black managers at the 32-team 2014 FIFA World Cup; and why there were no black managers at the beginning of the 2015 British football season, despite 25% of professional players in the Premier League being black.

“FIFA has acknowledged we have a problem,” says their vice-president Jeffrey Web.

This may be an understatement: as former AC Milan coach Clarence Seedorf says, “In all the European football markets, it’s 99% white men in charge.”

Osei Kofi, whose goals helped Ghana win The Africa Cup of Nations in 1965, says the problem isn’t limited to Europe though. On the eve of the Africa Cup of Nations, Ghana was without a coach, but all five shortlisted candidates were white, with the job going to Israeli Avram Grant.

In Ghana, the officials, they believe in the white coaches more than the blacks,” says Osei. “We’ve won four times The Africa Cup of Nations, with black Ghanaian coaches. Not a single white man. If they feel that whites are the best coaches, for the past 32 years, why have they not won even one?

Sport Matters: Too Black To Coach travels to Ghana, the UK and Switzerland to question why, with black players represented in leagues on every continent, they aren’t transitioning into management positions off the field.

Former international stars Jimmy Floyd Hasselbank and Sol Campbell share their experiences, while Sport Matters also hears from Herbert Addo, head coach at Accra Hearts of Oak, and Kwesi Ntanyaki, the president of the Ghana Football Association.

“It is changing,” says Sol, a former England captain. “But how quick it’s changing is another thing really.”

“Football is just a mirror of society,” says Seedorf, the only player to win the Champions League with three different teams. “So it means we’re not quite yet there. There’s along way to go.”

26 COMMENTS

  1. Stop dividing us you Arabs. The whites have been delivering. Just check the records. Why doesnt Tunisia or Egypt go for Keshi as their coach?

    • @@Bola ni Bola

      The problem here is you are refusing to acknowledge that you are supposed to grow your own coaches.

      Something tells me many blacks still believe only a white person can do things right.

      You are right, te racism, but self confidence, self respect, and above all self love.

      While it may not seem apparent to you, whites don’t dominate certain vocation by accident. It is by design. It is by design that you and I are communicating through English and not Lozi, Lamba, Soli or Namwanga. They systematically convinced us that our languages are inferior, we must use English.

      Go to Sweden, Poland, Portugal, Belgium, Italy, France, switzerland, Germany, they did not buy into the lies.

    • To answer that question which is a very good question we must also ask WHY DO WE HAVE SO MANY WHITE EXPATRIATES working in the mining and agriculture sectors..these are 2 key sectors and we all know Zambians are more than capable of doing those jobs yet we allow these white devils to dominate..SHAME ON US..EVEN THE PILOTS IN THE JUST ENDED BY-ELECTIONS WERE WHITE BUT WE HAVE MANY EX ZAF PILOTS LANGUISHING THAT COULD DO THOSE JOBS..SHAME ON US…

    • Sattish you have the argument though you dont know how to consolidate it but not the facts . Most of the countries you have mentioned are part of the imperialists that forced their languages on us the colonised. Only Sweden and Poland did not colonise. You seem to think that the coloniser was only Britain. France Belgium Italy Portugal and Germany did not have to buy into the lies. They were selling the lies. They sat down to divide Africa into their slave states and gave us their various languages. However your insinuation that iam a black man who thinks only whites can do things right is unthought through. The coach is but one person in the team. There are 11 if not 23 black footballers in Chipolopolo so where’s the beef? This same argument has prevailed in the NBA .

    • White coaches still dominate in the NBA. The problem is you see the coach as a more superior being than the players. He isn’t. Coaching is just his speciality and we don’t have black people who want to venture into that speciality or field the same way we have players who do-Like George weah Abedi Kalusha etc. So while we don’t have we will rely on the continents that have especially because we don’t send coaches abroad to specialise at the highest level.

    • So I restate the coach is NOT a superior being like most of you seem to think. If only to make you reason: think about it The Barcelona coach earns 1/30th of Messi ‘ s salary. All the Barca players earn at least 20 times more than the coach

    • Bola ni Bola wa sapulula bwino maningi. One doesn’t becoame superior because he is a coach. He just specialises in the job of coaching.

  2. Personally, I do not expect much from FIFA. After all they are mere mortals. What I do question however is the predominantly white upper echelon of most Christian groups. The Black man doesn’t stand a chance even in the “infallible” papacy. What a sham.

    • Nyau some people might think you are joking but the black race had three candidates for the papacy. However blacks were not seen as fit enough or perhaps “angelic” enough to take over the papacy. That is a message that gets passed down to the black flock who start believing God is white

  3. Silly question, they should ask why Arab, Chinese or Black coaches do not have self esteem to sale higher. Coaching is not the hard part, it is attitude and confidence that is lacking.

  4. As usual, even in the face of evidence our people are still insisting on foreign coaches. Seedorf is right, the activities seen in football is mere reflection of the world we live in.At jobs in zambia;same qualifications with a white dude,who do you think they will hire?Our people are destroyed because of a lack of knowledge.knowledge that should make you proud of your skin color, your language, your name, your history etc but for some reason we disdain our own culture and society.its not an accident as someone has written already.its by design.The best way to control a people without you being physically there is to get into their minds and plant perceptions and beliefs.thats what white people did to us.But our people still cant see.Be unapologetically African.Viva Panafricanism

    • If you dont believe me,check your history.why was it important for the whites to come in with bibles and religious nonsense first before they could start colonizing and stealing our lands.they knew that once you had been made docile through their religion,then they could come in and conquer.And so during the years of their occupation(colonial rule,white slave masters)they made sure they worked further on your mind.they made sure that we started hating our own way of life,changing our names to foreign ones like kenneth,frederick,Levy,Rupiah,michael,edgar.Made us believe that their governance styles are better;democracy,communism etc and so when they had done this,they left(independence)knowing very well that they had hooked us like a drug addict to their ways of life,hence the control

  5. No one is answering the question posed above: why a succesful coach such as Keshi never gets hired by non black teams

  6. Because you can mis-manage the club. Just see the choices our players make! From Congo to Europe and then China. We have poor management records therefore it’s had to trust us.

  7. …..to whom is this question directed…??…politicians…administrators….or the general black race…???
    …next, some-one would like to know why only white men have been to the moon…….

  8. good question though ,the summary is colonial brain washing at play for many, there is no white supremacy you weak minded being its the greedy and control of the world. Black men are fear whether educated or not that’s power. the other point could be soccer its not an African game these are thing we have picked as international traditions if I can call it that,and Africans are even very good on these things football a good number of best players are either blacks or others not so called white. I dnt think the so called white could agree that people like Ronaldo, are white

  9. a white coach is even not enough,we need white Presidents in africa.Guy scott was proving to be an all people President,some prove me wrong.

  10. The fact is, all humans are born naked, and equal. But, if you pay attention to, when white people came to Africa and introduced the Bible to the black Africans or the Africans in general, there is always a slide of a twist about the Christianity it self, in my point of few. The reason for this is, I have grown up between Christians and I always see the division in Churches, For example; black person would always go to black Church and same with the white person. I only think, this topic can lead us to impairment and civilization, I think this civilizations are very fast growing in all directions. As a black man, I would never believe that white man or any other man is more gifted than me, in any perspective. But Frank Rijkaard is a great manager, why didn’t he get a decent role Europe?

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