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%.
Why do all americans force everything to be racist?
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?
I remember Uriah Rennie
Someone is gonna get a call from the PGMOL. You’re not allowed to ask that question.
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.
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.
You didn’t need to say you were from America that was fairly obvious. But just for reference, 82% of the UK are white. That figure alone probably has something to do with it. And as for Europe as a whole, something like 90% of people are white. So we can drop this race shit. Very few people want to be referees. They’d much rather prefer to be players of the game.
This is the question you are not allowed to ask my friend
*shouldn’t be. Fk racism but stop bringing race to everything.
A significant percentage (majority) of premier league players are not white
I don’t know how entirely relevant it is given the league is represented by nations globally. I’d say it’s more wanting it to represent the country and the whole footballing pyramid rather than a small subsection of the top league as referees have to work up the leagues.
This has been asked though and reports have been written. There’s a lot of black referees in the non league and amateur football compared to the PL and EFL but there’s been accusations of observers being racist or having unconscious biases which limits their progression as one observer marking you down can make it extremely difficult to get through.
It seems like refereeing is definitely a bit of an old boys club - it was recent made even more aware by David Elleray being appointed head of the referees committee despite being investigated for making racial comments in which he apologised and sent on a equality and diversity training course. He stepped down in 2022 after being investigated again. Apparently he had said to an FA colleague ''You look rather tanned” and “have you been down a coal mine?”.
But being a referee is fucking difficult and you need to spend years reffing for £20-£30 a game whilst being abused every weekend. There’s no wonder why the overall referee numbers are falling.
I’d like to say that the qualifications they look for in a premier League ref is competency and how well they handle the pressure, but that wouldn’t make sense. I think the real question is “why are all the PL refs fucking dumb?”
Haha, jesus
Dude… You just broke my brain. This is true. Been watching EPL for 22 years… What the fuck.
its england so makes sense most are white
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.