Categories: EFLNews

EFL announces intention to introduce ‘Rooney Rule’ from next season

With just three just three BAME first-team managers in the EFL, the football body has announced that a Rooney Rule approach will be trailed next season - (C) Arsenal FC Via Getty Images

The English Football League have announced that they will introduce a ‘Rooney Rule’, which states that clubs must interview at least one black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) candidate for a vacant managerial post from next season.

The EFL held it’s an annual general meeting this Friday in Portugal and have since announced that the rule mimicking the ‘Rooney Rule’ will be facing an 18-month trial period, which will be for all first-team appointments.

With the ruling, the football body hopes to “address the under-representation” in the three tiers below the Premier League. This increases the expectation that more underrepresented BAME managers will be able to get jobs that they haven’t been able to get.

In a statement on the governing bodies website it read:

“That commitment has now been formalised with the introduction of a new Regulation ensuring that the principle of providing more opportunities to BAME candidates is mandatory when Clubs consider multiple applicants for a role. “

Adding on they said the new rule is adding to the “further commitment to improving equality in first team football”.

Known as the ‘Rooney Rule’ in the NFL, the policy lays out that clubs in American football have to interview at least one BAME candidate for every head coach or senior football operation position.

After the sacking of Chris Hughton by Premier League side Brighton & Hove Albion there are only four managers in the English top four divisions, that are represented by BAME managers.

One of the four bosses is Wolverhampton Wanderers’s Nuno Espirito Santo, who led his side to seventh in the Premier League and got his side into the Europa League in his first season in the top flight.

Outside of the top flight, there are three other managers represented by BAME managers including Macclesfield Town’s Sol Campbell; Northampton’s Keith Curle and Stevenage’s Dino Maamria.

Campbell proved doubters wrong by keeping up The Silkmen up in his first ever managers job before he started the club were five points adrift at the bottom of League Two. By the end of the season, they finished 22nd three points ahead of relegated Notts County, and four ahead of Yeovil Town.