The (Im)Possibilty of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) in English Professional Football: Practitioner Perspectives on Performative Inclusion and Organisational Constraint

This paper examines Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives in English professional football, exposing how they are shaped and limited by liberal and neoliberal logics. Drawing on interviews and a focus group with 21 DEI practitioners, across the men’s and women’s game, the study identifies how organisational practices prioritise measurable outcomes and reputational protection over structural reform. While practices contributed to performative forms of inclusion, which sidelined the labour required to address embedded inequalities within the sport, the analysis highlights tensions between the rhetoric of inclusion and the realities of underinvestment and marginalised DEI roles. Using Lacanian psychoanalysis, the paper reads these organisational contradictions as symptoms of an institutional fantasy through which DEI promises equality, while deferring confrontation with the classed antagonisms of professional football. Rather than aiming to resolve or obscure these antagonisms, we argue that acknowledging the (im)possibility of DEI can serve as a productive foundation in sport.