Yes!
Feel like it’s a whole storm in a teacup tbh… We didn’t intentionally do this like… Plus our club has a rich history of diversity. Controversy for controversy sake
There’s nothing controversial about this. I’m a black Brit who grew up in the 90s. So many people like me started supporting Arsenal because they had elite players who looked like us. I didn’t see myself when I watched United. Representation does matter
43% of premier League players are black according to a statista article on the topic. I wouldn’t be surprised to see similar numbers in the women’s game in 20 years time. The club should be doing everything they can to harness that potential, just like they do for the men’s game.
For me it’s not even a black / white thing. It’s a class divide. Women’s football has additional barriers (financial, geographical) to entry that the men’s game sorted out decades ago. The talent is and always has been in working class communities and I hope Arsenal tap into that sooner rather than later.
If I remember correctly Arsenal were the first team in England to field a majority who were black. Now the narrative has gone full circle.
Sadly. This is what 90% of journalism has become. Click bait headlines with non-stories beneath.
It’s from the Daily Mail, that should be enough for you to ignore and move on.
The women’s team put out a statement a few days ago addressing this and saying they are going to be investing in the youth teams and ensuring players from a wider range of backgrounds are included.
At the end of the day the women’s game is noticeably very white. Compare the team pic with the men’s team, or the fans at the game. Or even walk around Islington for 10 minutes and you’ll notice.
Now obviously the Daily Heil is going to interpret this as “Arsenal are kicking out white players for the sake of inclusion”. This isn’t really the case, but anything to reinforce their readers that straight white people are the real victims.
So the diversity can come only in the form of skin colour (that too in binary black/white; fuck every other colour) and nothing else, right?
Media clutching at straws again. Anything to say negative about Arsenal.
Whenever the Daily Hate bats for a minority you can completely discount the story.
And imagine if we’d foreseen this controversy and had replaced a couple of white players with WOC for reasons of diversity rather than sporting reasons…
The Daily Hate would be calling for legal action or government intervention.
Utter hypocrites.
BLM, otherst dont matter. I always LOL with this.
Arsenal is a meritocracy and always has been. A black player good enough will always be welcome. This is about equality and equity problems with women’s youth football.
Well, it’s not strange because right now, at this moment, there isn’t a person of colour on this team.
If you are good you will be always welcomed in any team. Not sure why they use colour card for everything
It’s like when people complain that no black actors won an Oscar, maybe the white actors were better and the decision was based on performance rather than skin colour? Also fuck the Daily Mail with their clickbait bullshit.
This is not the place to talk about anything regarding race in any societal issue, especially not in football lol. There’s no nuance. Whether this is actually an issue or not the level of discourse cannot fucking be “the number of black players on the men’s team surely is enough to balance it out!!”. Come on lmao…
All I will say is, even if unintentional, having a narrow scope in recruitment is not really helpful for a top level football club like Arsenal. People screaming about “merit” over “diversity” sure that’s logical if they are looking thoroughly enough and taking a wide as possible view in recruitment. If you narrow your view, you are naturally losing opportunities.
I don’t care what anyone says, the developing obsession with skin colour over the last 5 years or so is beyond worrying and a complete reversal from the idea that skin colour doesn’t and shouldn’t define a person. Seems like we peaked 20 years ago and are now sliding back down in regression.
Weird how no one seems to worry about the England youth male teams having far more black players than you would expect for a country with the ethnicity of England…
It’s a football team, not a Netflix documentary. If players are good enough then they should be selected regardless of colour.
If they’re not in the team photo, then it’s simply because they didn’t make the grade, not because of their skin colour.
Shouldn’t being signed be based on merit rather than race etc???