“What are you doing here?”: Brian Deane and football’s not-so-invisible barriers
At present over a quarter of players in the English Football League are black or mixed race. Yet there are only five black managers. Yes, you read that right. Five.
The lack of a pathway for black players into coaching and management is clear for all to see. A stain upon the ‘beautiful game’ which is leaving many players at a loose end once they finish their professional career and with their dreams unfulfilled.
The experience of Brian Deane, the Premier League’s first goal scorer, will sadly be all too familiar for black footballers across Britain.
In 2006, after his third spell at Sheffield United, Deane decided to retire. It concluded a 21-year career which saw him make over 650 appearances, score more than 200 goals, play in England, Portugal and Australia, and be capped for England. He had accrued a wealth of experience and knowledge, the likes of which have been the foundations for many an elite manager.
Mikel Arteta and Scott Parker stand out as two glaring examples of white, former Premier League players, with less experience than Deane, who have metamorphosed from a player to a manager at the top of the game in just a few short years after retiring. However, for black players the route is not so easy.
Deane knew this and so took to the craft of coaching diligently. He completed his FA badges in Scotland and gained a Pro Licence in Nyon, Switzerland, but faced discrimination along the way.
“I look at some of my peers who are in management and if I look back the managers never used to say, ‘Oh he’ll make a good manager’ and that was because they had a preconceived idea of me as a person, so I was never put on that plane.
“When I was doing my pro licence, one of my ex-managers was there and when he saw me, he knew why I was there, but he tried to make one of his old school jokes like ‘What are you doing here?’
“I thought to myself, you know what, it’s typical old school. Not embracing what’s coming and not wanting to be part of what is coming. It’s always about control and again it comes back to society. That’s about control and it’s about keeping people in boxes and we need to get out of that, and stop being pigeonholed.”
Despite those barriers, Deane’s sole stint as a manager proved a success. At Sarpsborg 08, a Norweigan top division side, he steered them clear of the drop in his first season and took them to eighth in the league, and the semi-finals of the cup, in his second season before departing.
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“That was two years where I really got to find myself, I was out of my comfort zone. I kind of went there and I thought ‘I’ve got to find out whether football management is for me.’
“The football was draining every day managing the players, but you could see that they were benefiting from what you were doing with them. That was what was beneficial for me.
“I was learning a lot about myself and all of these latent skills were coming out and what it’s done is it has made me able to look at situations now and realise that I am quite skilled in those areas when it comes to leadership and so on.”
Upon returning to England, Deane believed he was in a strong position to secure a job as a manager, but doors remained closed. The moat around those in power still there.
“When I came back I thought it was going to set me up. I had been out my comfort zone, you don’t see a lot of coaches going abroad and being in those situations and then coming back, and I did all that and then came back and yes I was a little bit disappointed that there were not many openings for me, or even the opportunity to speak to people about my experiences.
“We don’t live in a world where someone has 21 years, 700 games, 200-odd goals, and then goes and manages abroad or comes back and somebody goes ‘well Brian can we tap into some of that, just come in and do a job for us, make us more efficient, give us your experiences’, it doesn’t happen like that.
“We have a football world where everybody is about self-protection. You hear about people who will build these walls, so they have these layers before you get to them. I’ve heard where people just go get jobs and hang on as long as they can, it’s like the Peter principle.
“Unfortunately for me I have to accept that is the world I live in. It’s not just football though, that’s where we are in society anyway.”
Deane knows his worth. He knows he still has a lot to offer the game, and he insists that his experiences do not rankle on him. But it cannot be denied that Deane’s story will continue to symbolise the long struggle ahead for so many young black men, unless something can change.
Credit feature image: Phoenix Sport & Media Group
