In 2024, we launched our new four-year Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) strategy for English football, ‘A Game Free From Discrimination’. A year on, we have spoken with our Director of EDI, Yasir Mirza, to reflect on the successes and progress made so far, as well as the opportunities and goals for the future.
Yasir, what are your reflections on the first year of The FA’s EDI Strategy, ‘A Game Free From Discrimination’? What’s gone well, and where can further progress be made?
My overall reflection is that we’re making good progress against the commitments that we set out in our strategy. We set ourselves ambitious targets across three key pillars, which define our direction of travel over the next four years: boost representation, drive inclusion and tackle discrimination. A year into our strategy, we’re making positive headway across a number of areas that will help us to unite the game and bring communities together.
We laid strong foundations through our work and achievements in our previous three-year EDI strategy between 2021-24, with progress across the football landscape including a record number of people from Black, Asian and Mixed Heritage backgrounds playing the game, a significant increase in the coverage and viewership of the women’s game, as well as more women and girls playing, and increased representation and diversity within coaching and refereeing.
The progress that we have made over those years has provided us with a good platform to build on in the first year of our new strategy. In the 2024-25 season, the number of registered referees from Black, Asian and Mixed Heritage backgrounds has increased by 17.5%. We have also seen a 4% increase in women and girls playing football, taking the total to 5.5 million, with 90% of schools now providing equal access for girls in the school curriculum. The number of players in disability football has also increased from 20,654 to 22,630, representing 10% annual growth.
We know that making a real, lasting difference in these key areas is not achieved alone, and that’s why a key focus for us this year has been on uniting stakeholders from across football to tackle challenges head-on and in a collaborative way, and we see this as a continuous opportunity over the next few years.
What is the role of The FA in delivering a game free from discrimination, and how does it fit in with the wider football ecosystem?
Great question – our role as a national governing body is to ensure that we have the right measures in place to ensure that people are not discriminated against because of their diversity or protected characteristic.
Football has an extraordinary unifying power to bring people and communities together. Our job is to harness that power and ensure football is diverse, representative and inclusive at every level. We’re not trying to sanitise the game or solve every social or political issue, that’s not our remit, but by making football safe, inclusive, and representative, we can have a positive impact on wider society.
Delivering ‘A Game Free From Discrimination’ is one of our key priorities as an organisation. Our focus is on ensuring that within football, we drive inclusion and equality, knowing that positive change in football can have a direct impact into communities across the country.
Trust is also key. We want everyone in our game to understand that we will take action against perpetrators of discrimination, and that means building trust in our processes to tackle these issues when they arise. We want and need more people to report these incidents to us, so that they can be dealt with appropriately. We are seeing a rise in the number of reports, which we believe shows that there is greater confidence in our reporting systems and processes.
Our participants are now becoming increasingly aware that as the governing body, we take discrimination very seriously and have robust measures in place to sanction and educate those who choose to display these unacceptable behaviours. Ultimately, our goal remains clear: to make football across England a game that is free from discrimination, inclusive and safe for everyone.
How do you work with stakeholders from across the game to deliver on The FA’s aims and objectives?
This is our third successive EDI strategy, following ‘In Pursuit of Progress’ in 2018 and ‘A Game For All’ in 2021. Over time, we’ve become much clearer and more confident in our approach. We recognise that we can’t do everything alone, and creating lasting change will require a collective effort from across the game.
One of the key focuses of our new strategy is working more closely with the professional game and trying to identify the common challenges that we have, including our work to improve transparency and data. To understand this issue and to make progress in solving it, we held an inaugural EDI Leadership Summit at Wembley Stadium in November 2024, where we brought together CEOs and Chairs from across Premier League and EFL clubs to galvanise a collective commitment to EDI. Following that summit, we introduced Rule N – a new mandatory requirement for all 92 professional clubs in England to report and publish their off-pitch diversity data every two years across all protected characteristics. That level of transparency is a major milestone in understanding where we are and where we need to go next.
It’s also important to say that our work isn’t linear. ‘A Game Free From Discrimination’ is a four-year plan, but it’s not a static one. It’s designed to evolve and adapt to the changing challenges within football. A good example is how we’re developing our work on LGBT+ inclusion. For the past decade we’ve run the Rainbow Laces campaign, distributing laces across our County FA network and raising awareness of allyship and visibility. That’s been incredibly valuable, but now we want to go further and link inclusion to behaviours within the game. Working closely with our County FAs, we’re developing locally-led plans to improve LGBT+ inclusion at a grassroots level, recognising that every county faces different challenges. These new plans will launch in February during LGBT+ History Month, with further details to come.
What are the main challenges of your role and where do you see the biggest opportunities?
I think an overarching challenge for us is around being realistic with what progress looks like. It’s not about us saying that in four years’ the game will be totally free from discrimination, as that wouldn’t be genuine or achievable. What we’re focused on is making sure that, within our remit and what’s in our power and control, we keep moving things forward. In four years’ time, I’d like to see further tangible progress, with the game more diverse and inclusive, improved behaviours, and an incident reporting process that meets the highest standard across football.
We know there are limits and restrictions that we can’t control, especially within legal and political frameworks.
Sometimes, as a National Governing Body, we have to make decisions as a result of factors outside of our control. The change to our transgender policy earlier this year is an example of this. We reviewed our policy following the Supreme Court ruling in April 2025, and we took advice from experienced external legal counsel who are experts in this area.
What I’m encouraged by in this strategy is that it’s specific and focused - we’re prioritising areas where we are able to make real progress. The bigger picture is that there’s a real desire to make football free from discrimination. The challenge is in focusing our efforts and resources on the right things at the right time to make a tangible difference.
Can you tell us a bit more about the South Asians in Football plan, and how this supports the wider EDI strategy?
We recognised that improving the representation of South Asians in English football required a dedicated plan. That’s why, in January this year, we launched our bespoke strategy - Build, Connect, Support. The plan focuses on raising awareness of pathways into all areas of the game, improving access and participation, and embedding South Asian inclusion across football. This is one of the key deliverables set out in our wider EDI strategy.
We’re already beginning to see positive results. Recent data shows that more South Asian people than ever before are playing, coaching and refereeing within football. Female representation overall has risen to 15.4%, up from 13.6% in 2023, and encouragingly, 17.3% of all females in affiliated football are South Asian. Male participation has also reached a record 8%, up from 6.9% in 2023. These results highlight real progress in building a more inclusive and representative game, and this plan will help to ensure that the continued growth of these participation levels remains one of our key priorities.
Finally, the second EDI Leadership Summit was recently held at Wembley Stadium. Why are events like this so important?
Yes, we held the second EDI Leadership Summit at Wembley Stadium earlier this month. It was another opportunity for football to come together to discuss how we can address the underrepresentation of communities across senior leadership and coaching roles. It was great to see representatives from Premier League and EFL clubs there in an open exchange of ideas on how we can accelerate the pace of change.
When I speak with our stakeholders in the game, whether that’s the Premier League, EFL, our County FA network or individual clubs, it’s clear that there’s a real appetite to work together to drive EDI progress across English football. That’s why these events are so important; to create a space for EDI leads across football to connect, share best practice, discuss challenges and spark new ideas.
We see it as our role and duty to provide that platform for collaboration, helping to inspire the game to collectively move forward with the shared goal of making English football an inclusive, representative and safe space for everyone.
Our Game Free From Discrimination one-year review can be read below.
