The manager of Chelsea football club Frank Lampard is not pleased with Manchester City’s forward Raheem Sterling who feels black coaches are not giving the same opportunities as their white counterparts.
Sterling has become a more or less activist who has become so vocal in terms of fighting against inequality or discrimination against blacks. His agitation became more profound since the gruesome murder of an African-American George Floyd by a white American police officer.
In a recent television appearance, the England international compared the progress former England internationals are making in coaching. According to him, Frank Lampard (coach of Chelsea) and Steven Gerrard (Rangers manager) were both giving top jobs while their black contemporaries – Sol Campbell and Ashley Cole are yet to find their footing in the business of coaching.
“There’s something like 500 players in the Premier League and a third of them are black and we have no representation in the hierarchy, no representation of us in the coaching staffs,” Sterling told BBC.
“There’s Steven Gerrard, your Frank Lampards, you have your Sol Campbells and you have 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.”
In his reaction to Raheem Sterling‘s comment, Frank Lampard described the Manchester City star as being brave to speak against inequalities the way he has been speaking against it for the past two years. The Chelsea’s coach said though Sterling deserves credit for his fight against discrimination, his perception about the opportunities given to white coaches was wrong.
He said: “I think in the actual case of managers, I think he got it, from my point of view, slightly wrong, because it felt like a very casual comparison.
“Because if you compare opportunities and pathways of individual managers, you can compare myself, you can compare Steven, you can compare Sol, who by the way did an incredible job at Macclesfield and the job now at Southend is tough, it’s one all of us would find difficult to do.
“Then you can compare Ashley Cole who finished his career last year with me at Derby, and is working away here (as Chelsea academy coach) with me and doing a great job, and I think he’s going to be successful whatever he wants to do. So I think it’s very hard to make that comparison from the outside.”
