![]() For example, after Senegal beat Poland, Twitter account Watch LFC - a Liverpool fan account with more than 85,000 followers - tweeted that winger Sadio Mané put in a “ fantastic shift” for Senegal, citing both his pace and power. In his piece, Madu also noted how seamlessly the racist language slips from commentators to social media accounts with massive followings. It’s the historical idea of the black man as a senseless brute, repackaged in sporting language.” Before Senegal had even kicked the ball, they were being described not by their skill, creativity, or their decision making, but with the standard words you hear about African teams: Pace, power, physicality, raw talent, tactical naivety, disorganization, swagger, and all the other terms that are part of the same old language that pretends to compliment black players by reducing them to their physical bodies and derides them for not mentally understanding the game. “As annoying as it always is, it’s never surprising to see commentators fall back on coded language when they have to discuss black players, especially Africans, in soccer. ![]() Zito Madu scrutinized the media’s response to Senegal’s victory in a piece for SB Nation: After gesturing toward co-host Patrice Evra - who is Black, and who won five Premier League titles and a Champions League title with Manchester United and two Serie A titles with Juventus - Bilić said: “Senegal - which is not typical for African teams - they play for each other, and they deserved totally. Take, for example, the comments from former Croatia manager and current West Bromwich Albion manager Slaven Bilić after Senegal beat Poland in the 2018 World Cup. While the study focused on in-game statements, Lee told FiveThirtyEight that it could certainly have included statements from studio segments. “Which is that people from different ethnic groups can do exactly the same things in a game and yet be described in a different way.” “The study is important as it what a lot of people already know,” said Jason Lee, the equalities education executive for the PFA and a former Premier League player, over WhatsApp. The study also found that players with darker skin were often reduced to racist tropes about their speed and strength, which is often coded by commentators as “pace and power.” 2 The study found that, weighting for the different number of comments made about each group, players with lighter skin were praised more frequently for their intelligence (62.6 percent of the comments coded as positive were about players with lighter skin), work ethic (60.4 percent) and overall quality (62.8 percent), while 63.3 percent of criticism about a player’s intelligence was aimed at players with darker skin, along with 67.6 percent of criticism about a player’s quality. The study included 1,361 comments about players with lighter skin and 713 comments about players with darker skin. Researchers from RunRepeat sampled 80 games from the 2019-20 seasons of the English Premier League, French Ligue 1, Italian Serie A and Spanish La Liga - broadcast across seven different networks 1 - and analyzed more than 2,000 statements made by commentators about 643 unique players. ![]() A new paper published by Danish sports data company RunRepeat and backed by the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) makes it clear that soccer commentary in the United Kingdom, United States and Canada has a racism problem. ![]()
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