Honest question: I’m a longtime premier league fan from the US. In my over 10 years of watching English football, I’ve never seen a person of color as the center referee in a premier league match. Does anyone know why this is? A significant percentage (majority) of premier league players are not white, and given research around subconscious bias, you have to imagine the league and refereeing body would have an interest in having their game officials be representative of the players they officiate? With the quality of officiating being in the news so much recently, increasing diversity in the ranks of game officials could be one idea. I imagine it’s just a big old boys club though…
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People are saying because abuse that refs get but I don’t know how true that is, it’s a lot simpler than that. There are hardly any referees, hardly anybody wants to become one and not many are needed. The pool of referees is an incredibly small number. Nearly every person in the UK is white, outside of London and Birmingham, there really aren’t many ethnic minorities in the country. I don’t know how many referees there are in the UK but if you take 100 random people in the UK they are very likely to all be white. Logically 99% of referees will be white and not that crazy for 100%.
Dude… You just broke my brain. This is true. Been watching EPL for 22 years… What the fuck.
I’m more concerned about why they are all absolutely useless and why Tierney is still allowed to ref LFC games. He doesn’t even bother to hide his hatred of LFC. Biased is a massive understatement. I’m not sure he made a correct call all half there! Best league in the world, but the worst refs in the world.
It’s poor, to be honest. There used to be a top level black referee, and an Asian too, but there are none now. I suspect it is racist abuse, particularly in the lower levels of the game where they start out, which deters them.
I just skimmed this Athletic article about it. My summary is that there’s a byzantine process for officials making their way up the hierarchy, a lack of diversity among the assessors, and no real effort/desire to actively recruit from Black and Asian communities.
Why should they actively look to recruit black and Asian referees and I’m saying this as an Asian. Are they better than the current ones? Maybe. Could be worse. Or they don’t value being a referee as a career. Why does everything has to come to race?
And bald
So true
Nobody cares
I was wondering about this the other day when i saw a clip of an old game where Uriah Rennie was the main official. He was the only black referee I ever remember in the premier league tbh.
Difficult to encourage people to become referees in the first place because of the abuse, I can’t imagine that’s made any easier when it becomes racist abuse.
It is surprising that Uriah Rennie is the only high profile black referee from this country that I can think of considering that was about 15/20 years ago.
Always had the same question about fans in attendance! London is 54% white but I swear the stands are at least 90% white, probably more, even for London based clubs.
Is there not a lot of interest in soccer from other ethnicities in London, even though it’s such a worldwide sport? What’s the answer here?
English football was primarily created for the white working classes of the uk, a large portion that still attend games.
Also large numbers white people moved slightly outside of London and commute in to games.
There’s been articles on this in recent years. It seems black referees in particular move up the refereeing ranks and then once it starts getting to serious professional levels the FA or a referees body (I’m not sure which) just doesn’t put them through to the next level so they can’t move up the leagues anymore which surely has to be questioned by the football governing bodies.
There was a black premier league referee many years ago called Uriah Rennie and he was very good. It’s a shame he’s been the only one.
Football fans are not only some of the most fickle people around, they are horrifically racist.
They will find any reason to hurl abuse and insults to anyone that opposes their team or the decisions that go against them.
You can see grassroots football fans beating up refs, or belittling and harassing refs at an 8 year olds game.
It’s bad and hard enough becoming a ref, but a black ref will be absolutely ripped apart. It’s disgusting but that’s the truth.
The question should not ever be about colour, the question should ONLY ever be about quality. Personally I think the PL would benefit massively by getting reffs from outside of the UK as it could remove some of the ingrained bias they could have for/against certain clubs. And lets be honest, they certainly couldnt do a worse job than the current group, so whats the harm in trying it?
82% of people living in the UK are natives! So that’s a relative small pool of talent that’s available for diversity hiring? Not that hiring people purely based on skin colour is a good thing. Meritocracy & all that stuff?
I remember Uriah Rennie