The FA has been told it must “work a lot harder” to ensure there are realistic candidates from racially diverse backgrounds to manage the England men’s team in the future.

The national governing body has stated its intention to run an open recruitment process to find Gareth Southgate’s successor, and earlier this month published the criteria it was looking for in the right candidate.

However, the prospect of England appointing a black manager appears slim, with Chris Hughton, Sol Campbell and Darren Moore all 50-1 shots in the bookmakers’ odds.

There are currently just two black managers out of the 92 clubs in the top four tiers of English football – Nuno Espirito Santo at Nottingham Forest and Moore at Port Vale in League Two.

Data published by the Black Footballers Partnership last year found 43 per cent of Premier League players were black, but that just 4.4 per cent of managerial and coaching positions were held by black people – 57 out of 1,304 positions.

The BFP’s co-founder Delroy Corinaldi has previously ascribed that disparity to a “glass ceiling” facing black players. 

“Any England manager needs to be selected from the deepest talent pool of the best managers available. The fans would expect nothing less, and the same for black footballers.

“The problem for the game is that while the England talent pool of white ex-players has a deep end of 96 per cent of managers, the talent pool for black former players is barely a paddling pool at 4 per cent of managers, which is difficult to comprehend when the number of black footballers in the Premier League stands at 43 per cent.

“The FA has to work a lot harder to help deepen that pool of black former players transitioning to management to ensure next time around talk of a diverse panel looks better than tokenistic virtue signalling.

“BFP stands ready to work with the FA to deliver this change, but this requires a sincere commitment to do so.”