I interviewed Beth Mead and this is what happened - and what matters

Last Friday, after England’s consistently impressive women’s football team beat Japan 4-0, Ian Wright and Eni Aluko cut to the heart of a different story about a lack of diversity in the game.

- Donald McRae

“It’s a systemic problem and we are just dealing with it in incidents,” Wright said when asked to comment on my interview with Beth Mead in the Guardian last week.

Aluko, once an outstanding England international like Wright and now the sporting director of Angel City in the American National Women’s Soccer League, agreed: “It’s not a Beth problem. It is a systemic problem.”

This key distinction was lost on social media because Mead had been subjected to unacceptable abuse. One necessary question had turned the issue into “a Mead problem”. It has since become another “incident” that obscures systemic racism.

I don’t think Mead or I handled this small but crucial part of an otherwise positive interview correctly. In contrast to the England men’s team, her squad consists of mainly white women and so I asked: “Is there an obvious explanation or is it just coincidental?” That word, “coincidental”, was a clumsy way of asking if there could be any alternative reason to systemic racism.

Mead said: “I think it’s completely coincidental. We put out our best 11 and you don’t think of anyone’s race or anything like that. I think that’s more an outsider’s perspective.”

After the interview was published online, Mead asked if I would be willing to add some “context”. I agreed and carried the full text that Arsenal supplied to me, which they and Mead produced: “Mead believes more should be done to ensure football is accessible for everyone at grassroots level to ensure diversity at all levels. But she insists she doesn’t think there is concern in regard to racism in elite women’s football.”