England defender Tyrone Mings believes there is still a lot of work to be done in dealing with the issue of racism in football.
The Aston Villa centre-back was responding in the wake of offensive comments made by the former chairman of the English Football Association, Greg Clarke, in front of a UK parliamentary Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee meeting on Tuesday morning.
Clarke resigned on Tuesday evening and apologised for making several offensive comments including a reference to "coloured footballers".
He also referred to the process of a player coming out as gay to their teammates as a " life choice" and claimed there was a lack of female goalkeepers because girls do not like having the ball kicked at them.
The 63-year old also claimed a lack of Asian footballers was down to different priorities in the community, telling MPs, "If you go to the IT department at the FA, there's a lot more South Asians than there are Afro-Caribbeans. They have different career interests."
His remarks drew criticism from anti-racism group Kick It Out, as well as LGBT advocacy group, Stonewall.
Mings admitted that the news of Clarke's resignation was sprung on him and refrained from commenting directly on that, but he believes that his comments prove that a lot more work needs to be done in this area.
"Like I said at the top, there’s still a long way to go," said Mings.
"And when I say there’s still a long way to go, I don’t just mean people away from football. I don’t just mean people on the pitch. I mean people in administrative roles, people at director level, people at boardroom level. We’ve all still got a long way to go.
"If anything’s come from this year, a lot of uncomfortable conversations have been had. People have been more aware of problems that we are facing in society and things that we can try and change. Of course, there’s still a long way to go, of course, things like this are not ideal, don’t get me wrong.
"I’d love to be sat here talking about football for the whole thing. But at the same time, we’ve all got a duty of care to understand what’s going on in the world and to understand what terminology you can and can’t use.
"If you fall foul of that, or it’s a slip of the tongue, be man enough and brave enough to apologise for it. It’s not for me to condemn it but like I said we still have a long way to go, and this probably proves it.”
