'There's not enough black girls in grass-roots football and the England senior squad is not representative'

For as long as Stoke City Women manager Alena Moulton has been involved in football, she has been personally impacted by two major issues of representation in the sport - race and gender.

As a black coach - just last month appointed to her first head coaching role - she applauds the recent conversation around there being just five BAME managers across the 91 men's clubs. 

Then, as a female in the growing women's game, she has seen the Women's Super League make significant advancements as the majority of teams are being managed by females. But rarely has she seen the two issues addressed in unison.

"I think the focus has been just having more females involved in football, unfortunately having diversity from an ethnicity point of view hasn’t," Moulton says of the women's game.

"But there's still not enough black girls in grass-roots and if we look at the England senior squad it’s not representative. There’s a lot of work to do, but I don’t think it will be a priority just yet."

A Telegraph Sport report last month found that black players make up an estimated 10 to 15 per cent of squads in the WSL, as compared to over 30 per cent in the men's top tier.

That the league does not currently collect this data is worrying in itself, and points to Moulton's view that it remains down the list of priorities in the still developing game.

Moulton, 29, has coached across a range of clubs in the Midlands, including Nottingham Forest and Derby County before joining third-tier side Stoke as an assistant coach three years ago. She says in her decade in the game she has called out "subtle" racism as she describes it, but it is not a culture that lends itself to black women speaking up - most plainly seen in the treatment of former England player and now Aston Villa women's sporting director Eniola Aluko after she called out racism within the England camp.

"I think what Aluko represented was massive for other black females, what she went through," Moulton says. "At the start people didn’t really believe her, and that’s often the case.

"Recently I’ve spoken to a lot of my friends in the game, about what they’re no longer going to accept in the changing rooms, in comments from managers. I’m not afraid to challenge people but there’s people that are, because they're afraid they’ll get a reputation as an aggressive black female.

"Women’s football is really small and people talk. That’s the culture, and until people feel safe in their job to challenge, then I don’t understand if it’s really going to change."

Despite that, Moulton does recognise there is some work being done to make positions like hers, currently a part-time role, more accessible.

She benefitted from the FA's BAME Mentoring Scheme back in 2016, and the Premier League, EFL and PFA last week also announced a work placement scheme for six BAME players. However, she says these sorts of programmes do not even touch the sides in addressing stark, systemic inequality.

"I was the first cohort for the FA in 2016, four years later has it changed the way clubs are employing people? No, I’d question it.

"Yes it was really good in giving me the work experience, helping me to network, and that’s really, really positive for me. But when you look at five BAME coaches across 91 clubs, are these six people getting work experience going to change [that]? I really hope they are and they do, but initiatives like that probably will not have a bigger impact over the bigger picture of those making the decisions."

To Moulton, robust policies are needed across the board and she argues issues like the Black Lives Matter badges being politicised as far-left only distracts from what is actually being done behind the scenes.

In the meantime, she is determined to be a positive role model at Stoke, whenever play resumes: "I have previously had negative experiences that have made me think I don’t want to pursue football anymore, but now I’ve come to think that if I don’t do it then who will inspire other people in my region to do something in football, get the coaching qualifications?"