Colin Kazim‑Richards calls for opportunities as he seeks to lift Crawley out of League Two
On a late summer’s afternoon at Crawley’s training ground in Sussex, Colin Kazim‑Richards spoke about his dual task of improving Crawley’s fortunes in League Two and pushing for greater opportunity for black coaches; he arrived in April and, with assistant Julian Gray, helped save the club from relegation on the final day last season. The head coach set out his view of progress at Broadfield while outlining the work still to be done behind the scenes.
Kazim‑Richards said the team’s league position does not yet reflect the work being carried out after a summer overhaul that has seen 16 new players arrive and “eight, nine debuts” made. “The results are not showing the work we’ve done; it’s more a case of when the process is going to start showing,” he said, adding: “It’s not a task that is just a week, two weeks or a three-week process.” He described the challenge of combining immediate results with longer-term recruitment, mentality and structural changes across the club.
Kazim‑Richards and Gray both came through the Arsenal academy at different times, with Gray part of the first‑team squad from 1996 to 2000 and making a single appearance. Seven years younger, Kazim‑Richards never reached Arsenal’s first team but said he used to watch Gray: “He’s someone we would look at and be like: ‘I want to be like Julian,’” he said. Gray, whose playing career also included spells at Crystal Palace, Coventry and Fulham, has coached at Arsenal’s Hale End academy and at Birmingham; the 47‑year‑old summarised his approach: “You learn different things and you also want to challenge yourself,” he said. “I always believe that I’m coaching to help the players be better and pass on my knowledge and experience. It’s the same whatever age group. It’s my job to improve the players. Whether it’s 1% or 10%, that depends on them. First and foremost, I have to understand them, that’s always been a big thing for me. I need to know what they need and for the best way to give them that information.”
The club has faced well‑documented turmoil in recent years, most notably the case of John Yems, who managed Crawley between 2019 and 2022 and received a three‑year ban from all football‑related activity after being found guilty of 12 breaches of anti‑discrimination rules, the longest ban issued to a participant in English football for discrimination. Ownership changed last year when KB Sports and Leisure, headed by Raphael Khalili, took charge and Khalili subsequently appointed Kazim‑Richards, then coaching at Arsenal’s academy.
Kazim‑Richards became the third black head coach in the top four tiers of English football, joining Nuno Espírito Santo at West Ham and Lee Grant at Walsall, and he said the issue of opportunity remains unresolved. “Is there still a glass ceiling? Of course,” he said, adding that Gray became his assistant when discussing the Crawley job with Khalili and: “There’s a lot of black coaches who are good and deserve an opportunity.”
Asked about the recent short spell of Jermain Defoe at National League side Woking, sacked after four months and six games in charge, Kazim‑Richards said he had not spoken to Defoe and cautioned against simple narratives. “I haven’t spoken to Jermain. What I will say is, there’s a lot at this level and below that goes on that you might not expect,” said the 40‑year‑old. “No way is it a slight to say Jermain is a black manager and he fails. White managers fail all the time, too. But it’s going to be written like that because it’s Jermain Defoe and he’s a black man and he speaks out on some stuff. If you look around now, there’s a lot of young black coaches that are in the academies, in non-league, that are doing well.”
Kazim‑Richards pointed to his own playing background, which included spells with Fenerbahce and Galatasaray and international eligibility for Turkey through his maternal heritage, as experience he intends to draw on in his first full managerial role. He set out the immediate objective in clear terms: “Short-term, it’s about getting results, and then being able to get us up there,” he said. “You’re not just going to do it with the click of the fingers. Do we need time? Yes, we do. I see this as the start of the journey, but I believe we can go far and achieve those objectives. We’d love to be given that time.”
Crawley sit bottom of League Two after seven games.