English Football Clubs Miss Diversity Targets

The Football Association reports slow progress in improving ethnic and gender diversity across professional clubs.

English football clubs have collectively failed to meet annual targets to improve their ethnic and gender diversity, according to the Football Association (FA).
A total of 53 clubs from the Premier League and English Football League (EFL) have signed up to the Football Leadership Diversity Code, introduced in 2020 to encourage recruitment of diverse talent across senior leadership teams, team operations and coaching setups.
The FA plans to make it mandatory for professional clubs in the English leagues to report data on age, sex, gender, ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation within their organisations.
Anti-discriminatory body Kick It Out's Chief Executive Tony Burnett urged the Premier League and the EFL to implement sanctions for non-compliance.
Despite some areas of progress, the pace of change overall remains slow, and the workforce across the professional game in England is falling short of reflecting the levels of diversity amongst the playing population.