Last Friday night, after England’s consistently impressive women’s football team beat Japan 4-0, Ian Wright and Eni Aluko cut to the heart of a different story about a lack of diversity in the game. “It’s a systemic problem and we are just dealing with it in incidents,” Wright said when asked to comment on my interview with Beth Mead in the Guardian last week.
Aluko, once an outstanding England international like Wright, and now the sporting director of Angel City in the American National Women’s Soccer League, agreed. “It’s not a Beth problem,” she said. “It is a systemic problem.”
This key distinction was lost on social media because Mead had been subjected to unacceptable abuse. One question, which needed to be asked, had turned the issue into “a Mead problem”. It has since become another “incident” that obscures systemic racism in the development of women’s football.
I don’t think either Mead or I handled this small but crucial part of an otherwise positive interview correctly. Towards the end of our allocated slot I mentioned to Mead that, in contrast to the England men’s team, her squad consisted of mainly white women. “Is there an obvious explanation why or is it just coincidental?” I asked. That loaded word “coincidental” was a clumsy way of asking whether there could be any alternative reason to systemic racism.
Mead said: “I think it’s completely coincidental. We put out our best 11 and you don’t think of anyone’s race or anything like that. I think that’s more an outsider’s perspective.”
After the interview was published online last Tuesday, Mead asked Arsenal to contact me to see whether I would be willing to add some “context”. I agreed and carried the full text that Arsenal supplied to me, which they and Mead produced together: “Mead believes more should be done to ensure football is accessible for everyone at grassroots level to ensure diversity at all levels. But she insists she doesn’t think there is concern in regard to racism in elite women’s football.”
So I was surprised that, on the same Friday night when Wright and Aluko spoke so thoughtfully, Mead took a different tack in an interview with Sky Sports. After the game against Japan, she complained that she had made additional comments relating to diversity in our interview that had not been included. This is simply untrue – a fact accepted by everyone who has heard the recording. It is also not helpful to Mead or to the wider conversations we need about the lack of diversity in some areas of women’s football.
“I think it was unfair how it was written,” she told Sky. “My values and beliefs are completely different to how it was written. It’s not a true reflection of me as a person. In terms of diversity and everything in the game I want to be there, front and centre, and helping with that. I know the FA are doing a lot for that and I actually said that in the interview. That didn’t get put through on the interview. So unfortunately it made me look worse in that context but, yeah, unfortunately these things happen in the media these days … sometimes, don’t believe everything you read.”
Mead’s allegations against me obviously matter far less than troubling questions of racism in sport. But it feels right to add some background. In terms of “fairness” I actually should have pressed Mead further. As the Times reported last weekend: “There were only three mixed-heritage players in the England squad which won Euro 2022, and it is estimated that the proportion of black, Asian and minority ethnic players in the Women’s Super League is between 10-15% – compared with about 33% in the Premier League.”
As the audio of our interview shows I um-ed and ah-ed aloud during a long pause after Mead’s answer. In those few seconds I was in the midst of deciding whether to ask further questions on race and football during such a tough personal time for Mead and her family. In the end I chose not to grill Mead on the issue because it felt as if others in positions of power need to be asked harder questions – rather than a young woman still reeling a little from a tumultuous year of glory and worry.
Mead agreed to our interview as a way of publicising her new book. We spoke about many subjects and Mead addressed her past insecurities honestly. I am confident I presented a balanced feature on her. She is quoted accurately as every answer in each interview I do is transcribed in full. My questions are just summarised but in this case, in print, I should have used the exact words I said on the recording. Instead, in the original version I wondered whether “this anomaly suggests there might be a residual issue of racial prejudice in the development of English women’s football”.
I had sent the online article to an Arsenal representative, who sat in on the interview, and he asked me to change that sentence. I immediately did so and the amended interview said: “Is there a specific reason for this anomaly or is it just coincidental?”
Mead has had an extraordinary year and she has been rightly lauded for her achievements. The same is true of her England team. After decades of prejudice against female footballers, Mead and her teammates burst into mainstream sport this summer. It was thrilling but it still seemed strange that the overwhelming majority of their European championship-winning squad was white when football is loved and played successfully by all races in this country.
Brushing aside an obvious discrepancy, blaming the media or insisting that there are no such problems in the highest echelons of the game does not make the issue disappear for all those who rightly champion women’s football.
Meanwhile, two white people becoming embroiled in an “incident” relating to just one question about diversity distracts attention from the systemic racism that should be our primary focus. Wright and Aluko, speaking with measured clarity, reminded us of this truth. “I called Beth and spoke to her,” Wright told ITV as he reflected on our interview. “We had a great chat. I’m very fond of Beth and yes, it was a bit disappointing seeing that. What was said will obviously stay between us but I think it was a massive moment of reflection and learning for her.”
For Aluko the paucity of diversity in women’s football is “a problem for me that is about recruitment and recruitment practices. It’s about making sure we are widening the pool of players for Sarina Wiegman [England’s manager] to choose from, for the younger age groups to choose from, for the academies to choose from”. She said “the talent is absolutely there” but “the inclusion is not”.
Wright added that “it’s not a new conversation either. It always feels like we’re starting from scratch”. But his urgency was striking: “There’re still lots of resources and energy that go into [combating] racism in the men’s game. What you want is the same energy and resources in the women’s game.”
