Liverpool being sued by British Asian man over claim of racial discrimination after rejecting job application

Asad Farooq, a 25-year-old with a degree in stadium and event management who has worked for Tottenham and at the World Cup in Qatar, applied to Liverpool in November of last year for an administrative position, but he was not invited for an interview. Because the job description said that the ideal applicant would “have experience of working in an elite sporting environment,” Farooq thought he had a decent chance of getting the job. However, The Guardian reports, he was informed that the individuals selected for interviews had a higher degree of experience than what he had indicated in his application.

Farooq has employed Yunus Lunat, a lawyer and the first Muslim to serve on the Football Association (FA) council and as an ethnic minority representative on Liverpool's official supporters' committee, after discovering via LinkedIn that the individual appointed to the position had seemingly only worked one full-time job since graduating and had no football experience.

Farooq said: "As a South Asian, I’ve worked really hard to get my foot into the door and nobody seems to be giving me any opportunities. I’m more than capable of doing the [Liverpool] job. I’m not going to drop this, because they’re claiming that they are all about diversity, they’re claiming that they want South Asians to come into the football industry, but then they do these bad recruitment practices and don’t give us these opportunities. They’re talking about how they want to break down barriers but this is not breaking down barriers."

Farooq said that despite his requests, the club has not provided him with its diversity data.The Football Association's 2022–23 Football Leadership Diversity Code report contains the only publicly accessible data. It establishes a goal of having 15% of newly hired individuals in senior leadership and team operations roles to be Black, Asian, or mixed-heritage. Liverpool's new hire results were 0% and 9%, respectively, whereas the overall results for all 54 teams that signed up were 9.1% and 11.2%. Eighty-two percent of the male and sixty-eight percent of the female candidates on Liverpool's interview shortlists were black, Asian, or mixed-heritage.

According to The Guardian, the club has refused to offer diversity data or to comment on Farooq's case while the legal processes are ongoing. It is expected that during an employment tribunal hearing in March, it will attempt to have the case dismissed.