Racism In Football Essay

Well if you were thinking football, you were right. According to FIFA, football, also known as soccer in the U.S., has more than 240 million people who regularly watch and/or play it. They also have the most watched sporting event in the world, The FIFA World Cup. This past World Cup, views reached over 3.2 billion, which is 43% of the whole world. Now although, football is so popular, no one ever talks about the dark side which includes homophobia, corruption, and what I will focus on today, racism. I’m going to give you a timeline of some events, and then I will talk to you about three of the largest football entities and how they have tried to combat racism.
1970- England’s black players were habitually pelted with bananas, ridiculed with monkey-type grants, and subjected to chanting for no other reason than their ethnicity (Cashmore, and Cleland 11).
1994- During the Melbourne Knights and South Melbourne,
They published a guide titled Tackling racism in club football, which was a guide that focused on dissuading both fans and players from engaging in racist conduct (Kassimeris 122). After this guide was released, they were commended for taking genuine action and contributing to the elimination of racism in football. UEFA has partnered FARE, whose goal is to “combat inequality in football and use the sport as a means for social change” (FAREnet.org). Contrary to the compliments they have received, much like FIFA, UEFA has also been accused of not doing enough despite their supposed efforts. 76% of people stated that for some reason, UEFA seemed reluctant to challenge racism while the organization claimed differently (Cashmore, and Cleland 73). Despite the fact that UEFA fined countries such as Serbia, Slovakia, Russia, and Spain accused of racism in the past three years, critics still claimed that they had failed at tackling racism and instead let it fade into