Mickey Ambrose asks why Labour is not giving professional players a role in regulating the game

Doctors, architects, journalists and lawyers are trusted to regulate their own trade. It’s a crying shame that the same can’t be said for footballers.

The Independent Football Regulator has just passed into law but there isn’t a footballer in sight. The new regulator is to be run by politicians, civil servants and lawyers.

Indeed, a law degree was the yardstick for even applying for a role, something I didn’t have but I still thought I would have a go. But it was clear I didn’t meet the job specification.

It seems hard to fathom that in a modern Britain that embraces all ethnicities, faiths, disabilities and genders as equals, there still remains a prejudice which is so deeply ingrained it is never discussed, yet alone challenged.

There will not be one senior professional footballer within the regulating body. Unfortunately, you can draw comparison with other sporting governing bodies like the Football Association, founded in 1863, who have never employed an ex-professional footballer as their Chairman in 162 years.

If the Royal Institute for British Architects can be run by senior architects, the General Medical Council by senior doctors, and the Law Society by retired lawyers, why can’t the Independent Regulator be run by a senior retired and respected British footballer?

Do we really believe that a civil servant or a lawyer has a better grasp of our national game than Gary Lineker, John Barnes, Gary Neville, Ian Wright, Les Ferdinand or Alan Shearer?

Why? Please write in with your views. I would love to hear them.

The biggest shame is that this has been allowed to happen under a Labour government which should be preventing discrimination against the working classes, from where the vast majority of players originate.

The message is loud and clear: you might be good enough to kick a ball around a pitch and to earn the UK economy millions of pounds in revenue, but you are not good enough when it comes to running football.

This discrimination is very much evident today regarding former professional black footballers who have the same UEFA Pro License that allows them to manage in the Premier League, but they are rarely considered.

Furthermore, half of black players play in the Premier League but we still only have ONE black manager out of 92 football clubs. We haven’t had any black directors of football since Les Ferdinand departed Queens Park Rangers, and we have only ever had two black referees since the inception of the Premier League in 1992.

The good news is the Football Association is finally listening and has developed an initiative called ‘Reflective and Representative’ which aims to recruit 1000 individuals from Black and Asian and mixed heritage backgrounds over three years. Well done to the Football Association and to His Royal Highness Prince William for promoting ‘diversity’

I am not arguing that civil servants and lawyers should not be a part of the process: their talents, skills and knowledge in their areas of expertise are needed. But so are the experiences and wisdom of senior professionals.

Conversations about the Football Pyramid, structures in lower league clubs, youth programmes, football apprenticeships, shirt and advertising hoardings, through to flood light angles and training regimes, injury recovery and the PFA or being called for International duty; what do senior Whitehall bureaucrats and politicians know about any of this ?

In my opinion, there is one player who should have been offered the role as the Regulator and that is John Barnes. Instead, we have a Labour Party political donor David Kogan as the preferred candidate for Chair. How is that Independent?

Mickey Ambrose is a former Chelsea and Charlton player who lives in Stratford.

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