West Ham United

Former West Ham scout Tony Henry apologises for comments about African players

By Matthew Jones, Reporter | 09 May 2018

Former West Ham United head of recruitment Tony Henry apologises for comments he made in February about African players having 'bad attitudes'.

Former West Ham United head of recruitment Tony Henry has apologised for comments he made about African players in February.

The 60-year-old was sacked by the Premier League club after stating that African footballers "can sometimes have a bad attitude".

Speaking to Sky Sports News, Henry apologised for his actions and denied allegations that he is a 'racist'.

"I was wrong for what I said. I'm not trying to get out of this. I've been charged by the FA. This is not me saying 'what I said was right'. It was wrong, and I totally apologise. I just want to say that I'm sorry. I want to apologise most to the African players, the players of African descent, but also everybody because I feel I've let them down. It was never, ever meant to be racist in any way. The reason we said we didn't want any more Africans was because we already had three. The day before we'd had four, but one of them left," he said.

"I just felt that, as a head of recruitment, I look ahead down the line and I thought that, in 12 months' time, it's the African Nations Cup. If we had four African players, come the African Nations Cup, we are going to lose them in January and February, and we could struggle with that. Any team struggles when they lose four players. I just felt that it would have been too many for us. But also, as well, we brought a new manager in and we weren't in a good position. We needed to get some points, get some wins, and the Premier League is a tough league.

"New players coming in have to hit the ground running, and what we said was we would have preferred, if possible, Premier League-based players, who could come in and get straight into it. But that never always works out and, in the end, we didn't take any players. We took Jordan Hugill in the end, [and] we took Joao Mario, who is a top player. But again that made it, for me, even more important that we could bring in a couple of Premier League players to help out.

"West Ham is in no way a racist club. They are one of the most diverse clubs around. It was nothing to do with that and if you look at the players that have come into West Ham over the last eight or nine years there has been a lot of players of African descent. I am not a racist in any way. I have never been accused of racism in my life - never. I honestly think if you went down to West Ham and spoke to staff, management, players, I would think - 100 percent - they would say 'Tony Henry is not a racist'."

Henry was the chief scout for West Ham for four years, before his contract was terminated on February 2.