Discrimination in sport

As recently as the early 1990s black footballers reported racial abuse from their own supporters and regularly encountered racism from white players in the top division of English soccer.

Now, the Premier League is one of the most diverse soccer leagues in the world, bringing players from all over the planet into the fold.

Black players make up the majority of some Premier League starting line-ups, reporting little racial abuse from fellow players or from fans inside stadia.

The progress made owes a lot to progress in wider society on the issue of race, but also to long-running campaigns to eradicate racism in soccer in the UK.

In 1993, Let's Kick Racism Out of Football was established and has been working on the matter ever since. The organization now calls itself Kick it Out, and despite having taken large strides forward, the group says it still has a lot to contend with.

Key questions now being asked include: why are there so few black managers in the top divisions of English soccer? And, why are so few British Asians - there are only seven British Asian players in professional soccer - breaking through into Premier League teams when black Britons are doing so?

Peer pressure against racism

Piara Power from Kick It Out says the Asian community, which includes sizeable Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi populations, isn't exposed to the same opportunities within soccer as other minority communities.

"We think that's about stereotyping," he says. "We often hear in this country arguments about how Asians should be playing cricket because that's the game of the community, that they're physically somehow not adept for football. All of these stereotypes have been knocked down quite comprehensively by scientific research."

The campaign now aims to use self-policing and peer pressure among fans to root out remaining pockets of racism at Premier League grounds. This includes supporters who wouldn't abuse a black or Asian player but feel it is okay to shout pejorative language at foreign European soccer players.

Power uses the case of German national team captain and Chelsea squad member Michael Ballack. "So if there's somebody who calls Michael Ballack an abusive term, calls him a 'Kraut,' then we rely on others to say, that's unacceptable, be quiet," Power says.

Glass ceiling

While professional soccer in England may look diverse on the pitch, less progress has been made off it. Most team managers, with the exception of three, are white, and the same goes for the top echelons of management within the sport's national governing body, the Football Association.

Paul Elliott, a former Chelsea player and now anti-racism ambassador for Kick it Out, says a clear discrepancy exists within the game at an organizational level.

"Whilst there's 27-28 percent of players in the game that are black and from ethnic minority communities, that visibility isn't there inside the boards, the councils, the committees," he says. "There are only three black managers. So there are still a lot of challenges ahead, although there's been some outstanding work done to date."

Despite this, Piara Power claims huge progress has been made in stamping out racism in the Premier League and all across the professional game in the UK. He adds that the UK is doing better on the issue than in any other European country.

He singles out eastern Europe and some Mediterranean countries as regions of concern over racism in football - and areas in which black and ethnic minority England national team players encounter racism when playing international fixtures.

"Race is a big issue for us, it's something that is on the agenda in the news constantly, it's something that we as a society are very conscious of," he says. "We have had developments here that seek to rectify some of the wider social issues that we've had, and in that sense I think (soccer) does reflect society, and as a social policy agenda we're further advanced, I think, than other European countries."

Kick it Out says there are more anti-racism events at soccer matches in Britain each year than in the rest of Europe combined. Despite this effort however, the organization insists there is still much to be done to rid the game of discrimination.

Author: Olly Barratt/dfm
Editor: Nancy Isenson