The Arsenal manager, Jonas Eidevall, has been at the club since 2021 and signed two diverse players in his first transfer window in Nikita Parris and Mana Iwabuchi. So how do coaches, sporting directors and recruiters decide who is best? These choices are often subjective, formed with conscious and unconscious bias and are often taken from a narrow talent pool or narrow view of what best looks like. This means coaches, sporting directors and recruitment teams have a difficult task. At the highest level of women’s football only the best can be chosen to fill squads of typically 25 players. I will focus on the word chosen to emphasise the conscious and unconscious choices that are made when recruiting and selecting players. Photograph: Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC/Getty Images) The Arsenal team photo featured no women of colour. Every player, whatever their race, has to be chosen as good enough until proven otherwise. I would suggest, given the successful diverse class of women above, it is insulting to assume players of diverse backgrounds are not good enough to be chosen for the best women’s teams in this country. After all, no one wants anyone to be selected because of their race. ![]() This is an emotive topic that often leads many to reduce players from diverse backgrounds to an assessment of whether they are “good enough” to be selected. ![]() So why is diverse talent no longer being chosen? What it means is diverse talent is not always being selected to form the best teams in academies and first teams. However, this does not mean diverse talent does not exist. There has been a drop off in the number of young girls from diverse backgrounds in academies. Over recent years, there has been a lot of commentary on the lack of diversity in the women’s game due to professionalisation creating a geographical disconnect with areas where diverse talent has historically been discovered. If, like me, you saw the Arsenal women’s team photo featuring no women of colour and you felt deeply uncomfortable, I’d like to positively contribute to how we identify the causes and suggest a change in approach to player recruitment.
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