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Arsenal Women posted a photo of their squad for 2023-24 season, featuring only white players, which has concerned a lot of fans owing to its 'lack of diversity’
Arsenal women have come under severe backlash after their 2023/24 squad photo showed an alarming lack of diversity, with the entire squad consisting of white players.
Head coach Jonas Eidevall, and his entire 27-member squad can be seen being photographed ahead of the Women's Super League season, which started on October 1.
The alarming thing about the whole situation is that there were no players of colour in the squad, just over a year after the BBC made a shocking revelation following extensive research that the number of players of Asian and African descent were less than 15 per cent across the entire Women’s Super League, down from 33 per cent.
Raising concern, Angry Arsenal fans took to X, formerly Twitter, to criticise the lack of diversity and players of colour in their latest squad.
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“No professional team, men's or women's, should be able to have a team that comprises all white players in 2023,” one user wrote.
“Lovely picture and that but god, it's so concerning that one of the biggest clubs in the world doesn't have a single poc (person of colour) in the squad,” another wrote.
A third user said: “You mean to tell me Arsenal stakeholders & the execs see this and think this okay? The head coaches think this is okay? The players look at each other think this is okay? All white?? Please @ArsenalWFC @Arsenal there needs to be an emergency meeting & change”
Another one wrote: “We don't have a single black woman player. That's frightening.”
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Other critical fans labeled the lack of players of colour as 'shocking' and something that needs tackling moving forward.
The issue around diversity in the women's game came to even greater prominence last year when discussing the Lionesses squad that won Euro 2022.
There were just three mixed-heritage players involved for the Lionesses.
Ex-Arsenal striker Ian Wright called it a 'systemic problem' while former England international Eniola Aluko said at the time that changes need to be made in recruitment to tackle the lack of diversity.
"It's about making sure we're widening the pool of players for Sarina Wiegman [Lionesses manager] to choose from and for the academies to choose from," Aluko told ITV.
“The talent is there. The FA needs to sit down and look at whether they can build centres in certain areas.
“Just change our practices a little bit. With the professionalism of the game it's maybe excluded people a little bit.”
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10:47 - 12.10.2023
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