Chelsea manager Frank Lampard has dismissed Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling’s claim that white managers have an easier path in the Premier League as too “casual” to be exact.
Sterling appeared on the BBC’s “Newsnight” earlier this month and questioned how Lampard and Steven Gerrard secured the best coaching jobs while contemporaries like Ashley Cole and Sol Campbell did not.
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“There is something like 500 players in the Premier League and a third of them are black and we have no representation in the hierarchy, nor our representation in the coaching staff,” said Sterling.
“There is Steven Gerrard, your Frank Lampards, you have your Sol Campbells and you have your Ashley Coles.
“They all had great careers, they all played for England. At the same time, they all respectfully made their coaching badges to train at the highest level and the two who haven’t had the proper opportunities are the two former black players.” “
In response to these comments, Lampard was quick to point out that Sterling has been “brave” in tackling racism in soccer for the past two years and deserves credit for using his voice.
However, Lampard said the midfielder’s comments on “Newsnight” were too simplistic a look at how managers came to their roles.
“I think, in the actual case of managers, I think he got it, from my point of view, a little bit wrong, because it felt like a very informal comparison,” Lampard said.
“Because if you compare opportunities and paths of individual managers, you can compare myself, you can compare Steven, you can compare Sol, who incidentally did an amazing job at Macclesfield and the job now at Southend is difficult, he is one of us all it would be difficult to do.
“So you can compare Ashley Cole, who finished her career last year with me in Derby, and is working away here [as Chelsea academy coach] with me and doing a great job, and I think whatever you want to do will be successful.
“So I think it is very difficult to make that comparison from the outside.”
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