New diversity data and hiring statistics further highlight the “grass ceiling” facing black footballers, the co-founder of the Black Footballers Partnership has said.

BFP data published earlier this year found black players make up 43 per cent of those active in the Premier League.

However, statistics released by the Football Association on Wednesday show that only 7.4 per cent of people in senior leadership roles at the 53 clubs signed up to its Football Leadership Diversity Code are black, Asian or mixed heritage.

The figure was only slightly higher in team operations (8.9 per cent) and only 10.5 per cent among senior coaches. The clubs also failed to hit any of the code’s eight diversity hiring targets in the 2022-23 season, with the FA accepting the hiring rates are too low to drive the necessary rapid change in representation.

The FA is consulting on a new rule to force clubs to report biannually on their workforce, and BFP co-founder Delroy Corinaldi feels if the game cannot get this right, there could be a future role for the independent regulator in ensuring compliance.

“Black players have been told time and again by the FA that you need to give the code time to work,” Corinaldi told the PA news agency.

“How much time do they want? If the FA can’t deliver, it needs to hold its hand up.

“Black players are nearly 50 per cent of your (playing) workforce. The signal you’re sending to those people is that once you get to your 30s, it’s punditry or leave the game, because there is a real ‘grass ceiling’ the FA is doing little to remove.

“How disheartening and soul-destroying is that?

“This government has said they’re not having diversity as part of its football governance regime. But maybe we need to look at that again. An industry where nearly half the key staff are blocked from promotion is not a functioning one.

“We need to get all the authorities in and we need to get serious about this problem, otherwise it will continue for generation after generation.”

FA chief executive Mark Bullingham admitted in the foreword to this year’s FLDC report that the game was making “slower progress” towards diversifying at the executive, operations and coaching level than had been hoped.

He believes mandating clubs to report workforce data represents a “critical change for football which futureproofs our approach for years to come”.

“There is no silver bullet to solving these challenges and we know that this alone will not drive all of the change we want to see.

“But publishing who we are, measuring that regularly and setting targets that stretch clubs to do better is a big step forward. It will be for clubs to set their own targets based on local factors, but it will help provide a clear statement that football is tackling diversity head-on.”

Clubs must stop operating an “old boys’ network” and use objective processes to recruit managers and coaches, Kick It Out chief executive Tony Burnett has said.

A report from the Black Footballers Partnership in March found the number of management-related positions held by black employees rose by eight in 2022 compared with the previous year, from 49 among 1,338 individuals (3.7 per cent) to 57 individuals out of 1,304 in 2023 (4.4 per cent).

There are currently no black or minority ethnic managers in the Premier League following the sacking of Patrick Vieira at Crystal Palace.

Kick It Out wants football’s new independent regulator to oversee equality standards as part of a code of football governance and to compel clubs to share representation and recruitment data, with Burnett insisting far too much in football is going on in the shadows.

“Football is one of the last bastions of the old boys’ network, to be absolutely frank,” he told the PA news agency at the Include Summit in Manchester.

“It’s a tap on the shoulder quite often, who you know rather than what you know.

“When you look at the representation across football, what’s really clear is there is a myth of meritocracy.

“The best people aren’t getting jobs, whichever way you look at this, the best people, the most qualified people, are very frequently not getting the jobs. And so we want fair representation.”

Kick It Out wants to work with the football authorities to put an objective assessment process in place which guides recruiters, as happens in other industries like the financial sector.

“When clubs are recruiting a manager they would have a definitive list to pick from – people who’ve been through an objective process – rather than going off the recommendations of a mate of a mate, or an agent, and that’s what we’ve got to stop,” Burnett added.

“Football is one of the last industries around where a tap on the shoulder and who you know seems to drive your career path.

“It’s far too informal and it’s against modern recruitment standards. You’re not going to get the best people if it’s done in a way that isn’t objective.”

The Government’s White Paper on football governance published in February proposed that equality, diversity and inclusion would fall outside the new regulator’s immediate scope.

The paper said: “The industry has taken on greater accountability and the Government will continue to support reform in this space.”

However, Kick It Out and Burnett are insistent EDI matters must form part of the regulator’s final remit and is “expectant and determined” that they will.

“Football has been marking its own homework in this space for a long time,” he said.

“When football says ‘actually, leave us alone, we’re gonna get this right’ – well you haven’t got it right in the last 30 years so we’ve got no confidence you’re going to get it right now.

“This is a huge opportunity for us to put some compliance mechanisms around football to get it right.”

Burnett insists there remain big gaps in data related to EDI, both in terms of representation and the reporting of discrimination.

“We’ve got lots of different mechanisms in reporting when it comes to fan behaviour, 92 clubs all with separate reporting mechanisms, (Kick It Out) have a reporting mechanism, lots of other organisations do, but we never have a full picture of the data because the clubs aren’t mandated to share that,” he said.

“More importantly for us, we have no idea what the culture is like within the football environment.

“Because there is no compulsion for clubs to share internal discrimination reports, employee to employee for example, or employee against line manager, we have no idea what the extent of the problem is within football, and so we’ve no idea what sort of cultural problem we’ve got to tackle.

“It’s all right tackling diversity, but if we don’t try and make football a more inclusive culture, then there’s no point bringing more (diverse) people in, because they will leave.”