116 BME players have appeared for England through to the match against Republic of Ireland on 17 November 2024.  The first BME player at senior level, Viv Anderson, was the 936th player to appear for England since their first match in 1872.  The most recent BME player to make his England debut, Morgan Rogers, was the 1288th player to appear for England.  Thus, since the "colour barrier" was broken forty-six years ago, in November 1978, roughly just over one in every three players making an England debut has been BME.

It may have been possible to have seen the first BME footballer playing for England back in October 1925 with London-born Jack Leslie, a prolific striker for Plymouth Argyle between 1920 & 1935, scoring over 400 goals.  Leslie had been informed by his manager Bob Jack that he had been selected to play for England.  He later received communication cancelling his call up to the England team stating that they didn't realise he was 'a man of colour'.  Jack Leslie later remarked in 1982 to Brian Woolnough: "They must have forgotten I was a coloured boy."

A decade later saw the emergence of another great - Hong Y Frank Soo, although born in Buxton, Derbyshire in 1914, he had a Chinese father.  If it had not been for the outbreak of war, he would certainly have gained full international honours for England, as he was rated as one of the best inside forwards of the pre-war era.  He gained nine wartime and victory caps. - Football fine art

Even before the time of Anderson, now relatively dubbed 'The First Black Player to Play for England', there is another candidate, and maybe if there was not the racism problems that blighted English football throughout the 1960's, then maybe a loud shout would have come from the Leeds United camp.  Paul Reaney, allegedly of mixed-race.  But without further evidence, other than a few objective photographs.... then if Reaney, why not Alf Ramsey?  We are not ruling out Reaney, we just require more evidence. But please note, it was the colour of their skin that prevented their inclusion an England team, NOT their culture, and that is was what we are using as the guideline. - CG

Perhaps race will be irrelevant one day, but that time has not yet arrived.  While racism remains a problem in English football, these numbers indicate great strides forward have been taken at the level of national team selection.  We have not made a count, but we doubt any other European national side, with the possible exception of France, comes close to England in number of BME players.

That is not to say racial considerations have not influenced England squad and team selections.  We have no way of knowing whether or not they have.  But we do know that, according to a former England manager, Football Association officials on at least one occasion tried to make race a consideration in England team selection.

Vivek Chaudhary reported in The Guardian of 24 January 2004 that a former England manager had "alleged that during his tenure he was told by senior FA officials not to pick too many black players."  The manager, Chaudhary wrote,"claims that he was called into an office where two senior FA officials were present and they told him that his England team should be made up of predominantly white footballers."

Chaudhary's story said the manager, who "has a long history of closely working with some of England's leading black players over the past 25 years, privately spoke about the incident at the lunch" marking the 10th anniversary of Kick It Out, the football anti-racism group, but "refused to go public with his allegation."  Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, the rest of the English media ignored Chaudhary's report.  

The manager in question is plainly Graham Taylor.  On several occasions during his three-year managerial tenure from 1990 to late 1993, Taylor fielded England teams  featuring a comparatively large number of BME players and was the one England manager most likely to have been the recipient of such a proposal for a racial quota on the England team.  He also fits the description Chaudhary gave the manager in the story.  He was known for working closely with England's leading BME players, beginning at Watford  in the late 1970s, 25 years before the story was written.   Finally, he also happened to be in London at the time of the Kick It Out lunch in connection with the London Marathon, in which he was participating.  [ed- Taylor once more denied these allegations in mid-2015].

Racism, of course, often takes more subtle forms than racial epithets and explicit exclusion on racial grounds, both of which have been widely condemned for some time.  Far more threatening than overt racism in more recent times has been hidden racism--racism effected through discretionary decisions, where its influence is concealed precisely because these decisions are discretionary and thus readily rationalised on other grounds.  Squad and team selections reflect discretionary determinations in which racism may play a covert role.  This more subtle form of racism may also play a part in journalistic and fan support for and criticism of certain players, or at least the level of that support and criticism. 

We hope that no England manager or head coach has ever been influenced by racial considerations in team or squad selections and that none ever yielded to pressure to pick more white and fewer BME players.  We also hope the incident Chaudhary describes would not be repeated within the F.A., which, in a refreshing burst of candour when declaring in 2001 its all-out commitment to ridding football of racism, confessed it could have done more to battle racism in the game during earlier times. 

In Clarke Carlisle's 2012 documentary 'Is Football Racist?', Carlisle, who had received a solitary England under-21 cap, revealed that in an attempt to understand the depth of racism in the game, a current England internationalist refused to comment, because he believed that his place in the squad could be at risk from the Football Association. Consequently, no names were revealed.

Selection should, of course, be made on the basis of football considerations alone, regardless of the racial balance that produces in the squad or the team.  That is imperative as a moral matter as well as from the standpoint of assembling the best football side possible.

In the interest of clarity, the first BME player to represent England at any level was in fact John Charles, West Ham United FC defender. He made three Youth appearances for England in May 1962, twice against Israel, another a year later against USSR. It was another decade that the Schoolboy level would get their first representation, by two players in fact, Ben Odeje and Cliff Marshall. They played for the schoolboys against Northern Ireland schoolboys at Wembley Stadium, 6 March 1971, the first of five appearances for Odeje, the first of four for Marshall.

The 116 BME Players

The Sixteen Managers Who Chose BME Players

Coach/Manager	Term	1	2	3	4	5	6	P %	Blk Debut %	Blk usage %
		P	Players Used	Debut All Players	Blk Plyrs Used	Debut Blk Players	P inc. Blk	col 6÷col 1	col 5÷col 3	col 4÷col 2
Sam Allardyce	2016	1	14	0	6	0	1	100	0	42.9
Fabio Capello	2008-2011	42	640	26	22	10	42	100	38.5	34.4
Lee Carsley	2024	6	95	8	51	5	6	100	100	53.7
Sven-Göran Eriksson	2001-2006	67	1064	40	337	16	67	100	40	31.7
Ron Greenwood	1978*-1982	44	547	22	19	3	16	36.4	13.6	3.5
	Greenwood's record begins with Match No. 526, 29 November 1978, the first game a BME player appeared. We have only counted his record from this match in fairness to Ron Greenwood and for comparative purposes only.
Glenn Hoddle	1996-1999	28	380	10	75	3	28	100	30	19.7
Roy Hodgson	2012-2016	56	832	35	307	12	56	100	34.3	36.9
Kevin Keegan	1999-2000	18	256	13	47	3	18	100	23.1	18.4
Steve McClaren	2006-2007	18	265	10	90	3	18	100	30	34
Stuart Pearce	2012	1	17	1	7	1	1	100	100	41.2
Bobby Robson	1982-1990	95	1237	64	160	12	86	90.5	18.8	12.9
Gareth Southgate	2016-2024	102	1515	66	649	32	102	100	48.5	42.8
Graham Taylor	1990-1993	38	486	29	136	12	38	100	41.4	28
Peter Taylor	2000-2001	1	16	0	4	0	1	100	0	25
Terry Venables	1994-1996	24	326	27	32	4	21	87.5	14.8	9.8
Howard Wilkinson	1999, 2000	2	29	0	6	0	2	100	0	20.7
Total 1978-2024		541	7711	350	1946	116	500	92.4	33.1	25.2
This is a list to show how often BME players feature in each of the England manager's tenure. It gives a detailed list of each manager with their time in charge of the national side, and how many games they managed. This is followed by the number of players used by each manager and how many of those players where winning a cap for the first time. In comparison, the number of BME players used and making debuts from the same period is noted. A percentage is derived from these tallies to provide an accurate comparison between them.

Matches Involving BME Players

Most BME Players Used	Most BME Players On The Field
Most BME Players Starting	Highest Percentage of BME Players Used

  Many thanks to Colin Yates of Footballfineart.com for his contributions to the BME players project.  In particular, his paintwork of Ian Wright, simply known as 'Martyr'.