By NAN SPORTS EDITOR
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. June 12, 2020: Jamaican-born England and Manchester City forward Raheem Sterling says “the only disease right now is racism.”
Sterling says in speaking out against racial injustice in the Black Lives Matter revolution that has erupted since the killing of George Floyd, he’s “not thinking about his job.”
“The protest is a great starting point, to make your voice be heard,” the 25-year-old said on the BBC’s Newsnight program. “But just protesting alone is not going to make a change in this country. It’s how we move on from here. It’s about highlighting things, the society that needs changing, and then acting upon it. We’ve done a lot of talking, and it’s time now to act.”
Sterling said there needs to be greater black, Asian and minority ethnic representation among administrators and coaching staff in British football, and that equal opportunities should be given to former BAME players.
As an example, he compared four former England internationals making their way in management: Chelsea’s Frank Lampard and Rangers’ Steven Gerrard, both white, and Sol Campbell and Ashley Cole, both black.
Campbell’s two management jobs to date have been in lower-league football, at Macclesfield and Southend, while Cole started coaching Chelsea’s Under-15s after ending his playing career last year.
Sterling said” “The coaching staff that you see around football clubs: there’s Steven Gerrard, your Frank Lampards, your Sol Campbells and your Ashley Coles. All had great careers, all played for England.
“At the same time, they’ve all respectfully done their coaching badges to coach at the highest level and the two that haven’t been given the right opportunities are the two black former players,” he said. “Give black coaches, not just coaches but people in their respective fields, the right opportunity. I feel like that’s what’s lacking here, it’s not just taking the knee, it is about giving people the chance they deserve. There’s something like 500 players in the Premier League and a third of them are black and we have no representation of us in the hierarchy, no representation of us in the coaching staffs. There’s not a lot of faces that we can relate to and have conversations with.”
