Football Association chairman Greg Clarke apologised on Tuesday for using a racist phrase at a parliamentary committee hearing about the future of English football.
Asked why there isn’t an openly gay men’s footballer at the elite level in England, Clarke said, “The answer is I don’t know, right, because I’ve spent a lot of time talking to people from the LGBT community. I’ve talked to LGBT athletes from other sports who have come out.
“The views I’ve heard is if I look at what happens to high-profile female footballers, high-profile coloured footballers and the abuse they take on social media.”
Clarke was appearing at a Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee gathering to discuss the lack of progress in conversations between the Premier League, English Football League and the FA aimed at agreeing on a financial package to help all 92 clubs survive the ongoing revenue drop caused by COVID-19.
Members of Parliament also used the opportunity to tackle a series of wider issues including the lack of minority ethnic representation in boardrooms and insufficient funding for women’s and grassroots football.
Members of Parliament also used the opportunity to tackle a series of wider issues including the lack of minority ethnic representation in boardrooms and insufficient funding for women’s and grassroots football.
Clarke apologised and said that he sometimes trips over his words because he worked in the U.S. for many years, where he used the term “people of colour.”
Clarke had outlined at length how the FA were tackling issues of diversity and inclusion in English football and recognised the importance of the problems in lengthy, detailed answers.
But his evidence was littered with further clumsy language, stereotyping Asian people while also claiming a coach told him that young girls do not like the ball being kicked at them.
“If you go to the IT department at the FA, there’s a lot more South Asians than there are Afro Caribbeans,” he said during one answer. “They have different career interests.”
The FA released a statement shortly after the hearing concluded. “Greg Clarke is deeply apologetic for the language he used to reference members of the ethnic minority community during the select committee hearing today,” the statement read. “He acknowledged that using the term ‘coloured’ is not appropriate and wholeheartedly apologised during the hearing.”