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While racism, racialization and antiracism in football have been extensively studied, antisemitism within football has received comparatively less scholarly attention. Among the possible reasons for this academic neglect are the relatively low number of Jewish professional footballers and the debates pertaining to a hierarchy of racisms and whether antisemitic hate crime should be treated as a distinct form of racism. Yet, as this chapter evidences, antisemitic incidents are a common occurrence in English men’s football, with some high-profile examples both on and off pitch in recent years involving officials, club owners, coaches, players and, most frequently, supporters. The chapter provides an overview of expressive’ has positive connotations, so I would change this to ‘forms of antisemitism expressed within men’s football. It first discusses problems of contested definition of the phenomenon and then covers the scale of ‘religious’ hate crime in the United Kingdom (UK). Next, the nature of antisemitism in the UK is outlined before examining its prevalence and presence within English football fan culture. Finally, the chapter focuses on English Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur, whose supporters are the target of the majority of antisemitism within English football. This includes a discussion of the different uses and meanings of the controversial term ‘Yid’, which for many people in Britain today is an ethnic epithet and ‘race hate’ term, but which has taken on differing subcultural meanings within the context of English football fan culture. This is because for some 40 years, some Tottenham fans have appropriated and paradoxically used this taboo word as a term of endearment in songs and chants in an attempt to deflect the routinized antisemitic abuse they receive because of their perceived identity as supporters of a ‘Jewish club’.
Although racism in football stadiums has generally decreased over the last two decades, social media has provided a platform for individual fans and the far Right to racially abuse players, clubs and fans in relative safety. In 2022, The Alan Turing Institute released a report which tracked abuse on Twitter towards Premier League players across the 2021/22 season. Their machine learning tool found that there were 59,871 abusive tweets directed at Premier League footballers, with 68 per cent of players receiving abuse at least once. So, what is English football doing to challenge this and protect its players? This chapter begins by showcasing the findings from Kearns et al’s (2022) scoping review of sport, social media and hate, completed as part of a research project entitled Tackling Online Hate in Football. The review found that a total of 41 peer-reviewed articles were published in this field since 2005, with football receiving the most attention. The scoping review found that Twitter was the platform most examined, and racism was the most researched issue. Building on this, the chapter first contextualizes the existing research, including a focus on football-related online racism and a theorization of factors underpinning online racism. This provides a suitable backdrop for the next part of the chapter, where we critically analyse several campaigns and strategies used by key stakeholders to curb online racism and wider forms of discrimination in football. In our final summary, we put forward some ideas and countermeasures to challenge online racism in football.
This chapter unpacks the role identity plays in following the national football team. Is being in love with the ‘beautiful game’ enough to qualify you as a loyal supporter? If the national game is as truly as inclusive and as ‘antiracist’ as it claims to be, then why are we yet to see representation in all levels of the game in order to reflect the almost five million Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis living in the United Kingdom, with some communities going seven or eight generations deep? To answer some of these questions, Amjid Khazir – who is Director of Media Cultured and has been involved for over two decades in work in antiracism, counter-extremism and using sport for social unity – shares his experiences as a practitioner and educator. Reflecting as both a supporter and a valued expert who has delivered sessions to football scholars at several Premier League Clubs, he describes what he sees and feels the game has, can and must do to improve representation and become truly inclusive and effective at tackling hate, in order to finally eradicate approaches based merely on lip service. As Amjid lost a family member after an alleged racist assault, this chapter is both personal and pertinent to the discourse.
Over the past few decades, the role of race and racism in contemporary football cultures has been an issue that has attracted both scholarly and policy interest. In this chapter, the focus is on the evolution in the ways these issues have been analysed. Although much early research focused on the image of the racist football hooligan as the subject of concern, we have seen more efforts in the period since the 2000s to engage with the wider bodies of scholarship on race, ethnicity and national identity. The chapter begins by providing an overview of the background to the process of race making in football cultures. I then move on to discuss the impact of these processes of race making on Black players and supporters. This then allows us to return to the example of the events surrounding the UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) European Football Championship in 2020 in order to analyse the important role that the England national team plays in the formation of ideas about race and national identity in the contemporary environment. In the final part of the chapter, I touch on the need to include antiracism in any rounded analysis of this issue and conclude by exploring what the account in this chapter tells us about the changing role of race and racism in contemporary football cultures.
Rates of hate crime within football have been increasing, despite the visibility of anti-racist actions such as ‘taking the knee’. With a unique collection of testimonies, this book shows that hostility is a daily occurrence for some professional football players, ranging from online threats to physical intimidation and violence at football matches.
Bringing a range of perspectives to this widespread problem, leading academics, practitioners and policy makers shed light on the best strategies to tackle racism, homophobia, transphobia and misogyny in football.
This chapter focuses on English men’s professional football, which has traditionally been a hostile environment for sexual minorities. Gay male footballers, or even those suspected of being gay, have been excluded, marginalized and subordinated from the game by men attempting to (re)prove and (re)establish their heteromasculinity. Over the past two decades, however, attitudes towards homosexuality have seen a marked improvement in the United Kingdom and, indeed, across much of the Western world. While there remain claims that sport – and men’s football in particular – is slower to adopt social change, a significant body of research has documented how football is becoming increasingly acceptant and inclusive of homosexuality. In this chapter, we outline some of this research before examining some of the ongoing issues with respect to homophobia in the professional game – paying particular attention to Kick It Out’s annual reporting statistics, which include reports of discrimination based on homophobia, biphobia and transphobia.
Sports generally and football matches in particular are often the context within which hate crime happens. However, football-related hate crime occurs not only within football stadiums but also, increasingly, online. This edited book sheds light on the scope of hate crime in football – for example, in terms of racism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia and misogyny (and the intersectionality among these) – and identifies best strategies to tackle hate crime. The book provides a unique and comprehensive account of the nature, determinants and extent of hate crime against football players and supporters and the consequences for victims, their families and wider communities. The book also documents the prevalence and severity of online and offline hate crimes, which are usually influenced by ‘trigger’ events of local, national and international significance. The effectiveness of campaigns against hate crime in football and of criminal justice responses to it are also examined.
Professional football has attracted large crowds since its inception in the 19th century. It has also had players from different cultures, ethnicities, religions and sexual orientation. Few would argue that players, or indeed spectators, should go to stadia and be subjected to behaviour that would not be tolerated, either morally or legally, in other places. Yet that is exactly what happens on a weekly basis, with many abusive fans describing their behaviour as just ‘banter’ and those who challenge them as the ‘fun police’, whereas a more accurate description is ‘hate crime’. This chapter examines the prosecution approach to tackling hate crime in football. It starts by looking at hate crime generally and the football context specifically. The respective roles of the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts are considered as well as their interplay. The history of hate crime in football in the 19th and 20th centuries is examined, as it explains the genesis of the legislation used to tackle violence and disorder in football. An overview of the scale and breadth of the problem in hate crime is provided by considering events from 2000 to 2020. The chapter looks in detail at the key legislation in place at the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 and how policies and guidance have been developed for prosecutors, in partnership with the police. The two leading cases, on football banning orders (Gough v Chief Constable of Derbyshire) and Section 3 of the Football (Offences) Act 1991 (Director of Public Prosecutions v Stoke on Trent Magistrates’ Court), are examined along with cases from the lower courts reported in the media. It is argued that while the legislation is robust, problems with hate crime persist. Also, the current legislation and regulations, which have been strengthened post COVID-19, and the prosecution police and guidance are assessed. The chapter concludes that while much has been achieved, there is much still to be done – and there is no room for complacency.
Racism in football has, evidently, quite a long history. Whether in the form of mimicking monkey sounds, throwing bananas at Black players or generally abusing non-White footballers, racism has almost become common practice in and around football stadiums in many countries across the world. Better known today as ‘hate crime’, and certainly a part of national legislation and international statutes, the many different shapes and forms of racial discrimination that continue to blemish the popular game of football are often easily identifiable, whether they be actions carried out within the anonymity that characterizes a crowd of football supporters or the result of racist stereotypes held by the game’s senior officials. While national and international governing bodies, along with football clubs, officials and players, often condemn the phenomenon of racism in football, and the pertinent governing bodies all maintain regulations that stipulate specific penalties when relevant incidents occur, too little has been achieved. Since racial discrimination varies from one cultural setting to another, this chapter first assesses the official position of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the Union of European Football Associations and the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football vis-à-vis racism in football. Then it examines race-related cases in English, American and Italian football. Our point of departure is FIFA’s Good Practice Guide on Diversity and Anti-Discrimination, for it explicitly states that ‘one racist comment … does not necessarily make a person racist’ (FIFA, nd: 91).
In this chapter, we argue that racially motivated vandalism is a social practice which needs to be examined in its own right as much as practices such as antilocution or the verbalization of racist abuse and physical attacks. The empirical context of this chapter rests on the UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) European Football Championship 2020 and the subsequent vandalism of the mural of England football player Marcus Rashford in south Manchester following England’s defeat against Italy in the final. After locating the context of what can be framed as ‘hate vandalism’ as an ideological signifier, the chapter moves on to theorize the intersectional nature of Rashford’s race and class and how, in the current context of Black Lives Matter and child food poverty campaigns, this lends itself to postcolonial narratives. The chapter explores the long history of the mural as an art form whose creation, desecration and sometimes reconstruction have much to offer in terms of forging an understanding of contemporary race and ethnicity in 21st-century Britain.
