Honest question: I’m a longtime premier league fan from the US. In my over 10 years of watching English football, I’ve never seen a person of color as the center referee in a premier league match. Does anyone know why this is? A significant percentage (majority) of premier league players are not white, and given research around subconscious bias, you have to imagine the league and refereeing body would have an interest in having their game officials be representative of the players they officiate? With the quality of officiating being in the news so much recently, increasing diversity in the ranks of game officials could be one idea. I imagine it’s just a big old boys club though…
It doesn’t make sense to compare referee diversity to player diversity, PGMOL only has English referees in the PL, whereas players are from all nationalities.
That being said it is statistically curious that there are no non-white referees given the numbers.
The English national team is also diverse, one of the most diverse in Europe.