Racism on the pitch – the ugly side of the beautiful game

Chelsea Football Club has hit the headlines in recent days – but, unfortunately, it’s more to do with the behaviour of their fans than with football.

Just last week, Chelsea fans “shamed the club” for singing anti-Semitic chants about Tottenham during their Europa League match against MOL Vidi. And this came only days after four fans were suspended for allegedly racially abusing Raheem Sterling during Chelsea’s game with Manchester City at Stamford Bridge.

Following the incident, Sterling took to social media to say that he wasn’t surprised by what had happened, accusing some sections of the media of helping to “fuel racism an[d] aggressive behaviour” through their portrayal of black footballers.

To illustrate his point, he cited the different ways in which news outlets reported how his Manchester City team-mates, one black and one white, bought houses for their mothers.

A headline about Tosin Adarabioyo focused on how he “splashes out” £2.25 million on a mansion “despite having never started a Premier League match”, while Phil Foden was described as a “starlet”, who “buys new £2 million home for his mum”.

Sterling ends his post by calling for newspapers to “have a second thought about fair publicity an[d] give all players an equal chance.”

Depressingly, the alleged racist incidents are not restricted to fans of Chelsea Football Club, proving that the beautiful game has an ugly side. On the same day as the Sterling episode, police in Scotland arrested two fans for allegedly directing racial abuse at Motherwell substitute, Christian Mblulu, and just a week before, a fan was charged with throwing a banana skin on to the pitch during Arsenal’s match against Tottenham.

Statistics bear out what these recent high-profile examples point to. A report published by football’s equality and inclusion organisation, Kick It Out, at the end of November revealed that reports of discriminatory abuse in the sport increased 11% last season – a sixth annual rise, with reports of racism making up 53% of the overall total – up 22% from the previous year.

It makes for grim reading, and while we may like to think we have made progress both on and off the pitch since the 1980s, statistics and these high-profile incidents show that the sport and society still have a long way to go.

The response elicited by Sterling’s post does feel like a seminal moment. Since the story broke, there has been a lot of soul searching among journalists as to the part the media may have played, and The Black Collective of Media in Sport (BCOMS) has said it hoped that Sterling’s comments would “serve as a wake-up call not just for the newspapers, but for all media.”

BCOMS believes African, Caribbean and mixed race people are significantly under-represented in the sports media despite disproportionately higher interest in, and achievement from, the community on the field, track and court.

It is a view shared by The Sports People’s Think Tank, which has encouraged “sports people to stage a media blackout” if action isn’t taken by the media to address this “with urgency”. The think tank stated: “Our strong feeling is that a lack of diversity in the media has also led to a portrayal of BAME sports stars that has had a direct impact on how they are perceived by the general public and prospective employers”.

Bournemouth defender Tyrone Mings pulled out of an interview last week with talkSPORT over its coverage of the alleged racial abuse Sterling suffered. Whether others will follow remains to be seen.

Freshwater has been along-time supporter of Show Racism the Red Card – an anti-racism educational charity, which uses the high-profile status of football and football players to help tackle racism in society by delivering education to young people and adults in their schools and workplaces.

When one of my colleagues posted about our involvement in the charity on her social media page, one of her friends questioned whether racism is still a big issue and whether it still takes place. What happened over the course of the past week or so, and what happens at football matches from grassroots level up, proves it still is.

And just as footballers are calling it out, we all have a role to play in challenging racism wherever it is experienced or witnessed – be that at a football game, in the pub, on social media, at work or at the school gates.