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The reporter on the story denied that the piece was about race and tweeted that \"it didn't even cross my mind.\"

\"We are now seeing a cohort of players who feel like they have the agency and capability to challenge racism in ways that haven't been done before,\" Daniel Burdsey, a sociologist at the University of Brighton who researches racism in sport and society, told ABC News.

'Huge disconnect'

As of November last year, there were only six black, Asian or minority ethnic, or BAME, managers out of the 72 teams in the top four divisions of English soccer. A report released last year by the FA, U.K. soccer's governing body, found that people from BAME backgrounds make up only 6% of \"leadership roles\" in the sport in England and Wales.

Meanwhile, only 4% of referees identify as BAME, according to the FA.

\"We hear racism being shouted on the terraces, but it also happens when a black official walks up to a boardroom [of a soccer club], but doesn't get recognized as an official, because the person upstairs doesn't recognize him and ... I've experienced some of that myself,\" Onuoura told ABC News. \"There's the culture of 'black players play,' and non-black players coach, manage, lead and are senior management in the company.\"

The U.K.'s governing institutions have implemented the NFL's so-called Rooney Rule, whereby clubs must interview at least one BAME candidate for management positions, but the problem, for campaigners inside the game, goes far wider than that, and the solutions are far from clear.

\"Football can do better,\" Onuoura said. \"[But] we've allowed the narrowing of opinion, the shutting down of opinion, this intolerance to seep into our culture over the last eight to 10 years ... and it might take another eight to 10 years to turn that the other way.\"

ABC News' Eden McClymont and Samee Macarthur-Caffoor contributed to this report.

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