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…
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.