Leon Mann, co-founder of the Football Blacklist, has called on clubs to follow in Brentford’s footsteps to address the lack of diversity at managerial and boardroom level in English football.
In March 2021, Brentford made the rare decision to advertise for a non-executive director role — a position that would ordinarily be appointed by football clubs without a recruitment process — with the aim of attracting candidates representative of the diverse West London community that they serve.
Mann has spent his career championing equal opportunity within the football industry, co-founding the Football Blacklist in 2008 prior to setting up the Black Collection of Media in Sport (BCOMS) in 2009. He emphasised the importance of improving representation in boardrooms in order to increase the number of Black coaches moving into managerial roles, and singled out the example set by Brentford as a blueprint for clubs to follow.
Speaking to The Athletic’s In The Boardroom podcast, sponsored by Liontrust: “I think football in many ways needs to make it more more known, or needs to work with recruitment companies — and recruitment companies are on huge sums of money to recruit for board and leadership level people — that that they are looking for diverse candidates.
“So what Brentford have done there is they’ve shown that by being proactive, by being open about their ambitions, that you can identify incredibly strong candidates. And for me, I say to the game now as a challenge: if Brentford can do it, why can’t you?
“Because if we are truly committed to diversifying the football industry, that includes the boardrooms, that includes the leadership teams, and that’s where it’s ultimately going to make a huge, huge immediate impact for a business. So what are we waiting for? Let’s get on with it.”
Following their interviewing and shortlisting process, Brentford appointed two non-executive directors to their board: Preeti Shetty and Deji Davies, with the former becoming the first British South Asian woman in a Premier League boardroom.
Mann believes that a lack of diversity at boardroom level has previously been disheartening to Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority players with ambitions of going into management, but notes improvements with the latest generation of former professionals taking their first steps into coaching.
“I think there is certainly a number of black footballers who have taken the position of, you know, what’s the point? These chairs and these boards, these leadership teams, they’re not interested in black coaches and managers, so I’m not going to try.
“However, I think with this generation that we’re talking about now, I think there’s a slightly different attitude and that is reflected in the numbers that we're seeing on the coaching badges that the PFA are running.
“There’s good numbers of former Black players taking their badges, getting qualified and putting themselves out there. People like Liam Rosenior, Ashley Cole, Joleon Lescott; these are people who are coming through who are hopefully trusting the system and putting themselves out there in the hope that they will get opportunities going forward.”
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