Why Are There So Few Black England Women Footballers? (SheKicks Investigates)

Glenn Moore starts with two team photographs – England’s men before the 2018 World Cup semi-final and England’s women before the 2019 one – and the count that follows them: eleven Black players in Gareth Southgate’s squad, two in Phil Neville’s. Across 2010-2020, 49 per cent of England’s capped men were Black against 19 per cent of the women. Hope Powell, Anita Asante and the coach Keith Boanas all point to the same cause, that the women’s game professionalised itself into a middle-class sport by moving centres of excellence out of the inner cities to places children cannot reach on a bus. The FA’s Kay Cossington concedes it directly: solving one problem created another. She sets out the Lioness Talent Pathway and its urban partnerships with ten EFL clubs, and the piece closes on the players still going undiscovered.