Racism in football: Is the sport living in a deluded bubble?

Racism is unacceptable. Regardless of who you are, the situation you find yourself in, or any excuses you may offer up, the moment you bring up someone’s race is the moment that you have crossed the line. However, there seems to be one area where casual racism is endemic, and is rarely punished. I am talking about football. If you Google football and racism, you will come upon scores of results, and ones about the lack of it are rare.

While you may believe this is actually about sport in general you only have to look as far as NBA to see how racism is treated in other sporting activities. In April this year, TMZ released a recording from September 2013 between LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling and a female friend.

Sterling told V. Stiviano: “It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people”, and, “You can sleep with [black people]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want”, but “the little I ask you is ... not to bring them to my games”. The person she had posed with on Instagram? Magic Johnson, a Basketball Hall of Fame player. After the comments he made he was subsequently forced to sell his franchise, and now has a lifetime ban. This all happened within the space of roughly two months.

Now consider the strange situation of Malky Mackay. Almost three months ago text messages of homophobic, racist and sexist nature were revealed, which had been written by Mackay during his tenure as manager of Cardiff City. This was further exacerbated when the League Manager’s association declared that this was all just “friendly text message banter” – a statement they soon apologised for. What!

However, it seems that this did not seem to be the end of Mackay’s career, as it justifiably should have been. Instead he has now found new employment as manager of Wigan Athletic. You may think that would be the end of this story. But wait, there is more.

In response to the controversy that surrounded the appointment of Mackay, Dave Whelan, the Chairman and Owner, made equally horrible statements in support of his manager. He tried to veil his comments as compliments as well as comment that certain words weren’t actually racist, but this resulted in it just coming off as worse. Yet, no forced sales, nor lifetime bans, for either of these two men. In fact, the FA and by extension FIFA itself is doing next to nothing to stomp out this disease.

They may have their high profile campaigns, but honestly is this really cutting down on racism? There have been so many high profile cases, which never really lead to any sort of meaningful punishments. John Terry? Was found guilty, fined about two weeks wages and missed four games before resuming like nothing had ever happened. Luis Suarez? Once again found guilty, (strangely enough supported by his team and manager) and now living the high life in Barcelona. There are many more examples, but all of them seem to reach the same ending; nobody is really punished.

If nobody is ever really severely punished, this casual attitude to racism will continue. Imagine saying comparable things to your fellow students or work colleagues. You would rightly get the sack immediately. Anybody who thinks something as horrid as one race being better than another is an individual who should not be part of our society.

But football is one of the only fields where leniency is upheld. Why? Is it that FIFA in their inexorable quest for profits has forgotten how to keep the beautiful game unblemished? One of the possible reasons is because in banning people, they risk losing profits. If they had banned Luis Suarez or John Terry more severely, they may have faced lawsuits, and lost ticket revenues. Do they think therefore that it is much better to give a slap on the wrist, and hope it all blows over?

I am not trying to say that racism has been eradicated in all other sports, but in football it seems so much more prevalent. What really frightens me is that whilst this game is able to transcend race, culture, language and sex, it will never be able to cross boundaries, because certain individuals permeate football and certain authorities refuse to do anything about it.