The Football News Thread 2019/20 - everything not Wolves

[Tony Towner]

It's one train stop from town and a 5 minute walk or 20 mins from Brum

 

[Kenny]

Must be a terrible away day, shit to get to and nothing anywhere near the ground to entertain you.

Morrisons...few minutes further away.Burger King...Pizza Hut....IKEA. everything you need for a great away day.

Beats MK Dons

 

[MARKakaJIM]

It's one train stop from town and a 5 minute walk or 20 mins from Brum

Isn't Walsall just a shitty little local commuter station now? Don't see it being a great route in for anyone coming from too far afield.

Absolute wank fest to drive to.

Morrisons...few minutes further away.Burger King...Pizza Hut....IKEA. everything you need for a great away day.

Beats MK Dons

Fuck walking from IKEA to the ground!

I imagine the McDonalds is still open on the retail park next door?

 

[Kenny]

Forgot about the retail park. Scratch IKEA...McD's and Matalan it is then.

 

[Kenny]

Parked by the stadium when we played Ajax there last year. Took around an hour to get to the main road. Glorious.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Walsall's ticket prices are a joke, ticket/transport/a couple of pints would cost me the thick end of 40 notes. No ta.

 

[Tony Towner]

Walsall is like Wolverhampton to most away fans. Go to Brum, get a 20 minute train in at 2.15, job done

 

[SSB]

Northampton Town "made aware of allegations of racist chanting from the away stand" during Saturday's game v Salford City at Sixfields.

Allegations "centre around chanting of words that are offensive & discriminatory to travelling community".

Does anyone know more context to this?

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Do they have a player from the traveller community?

Basically "where's your caravan?" is off limits, one would suspect.

 

[Tony Towner]

Apparently there are a few traveller caravans parked on a hill outside the ground which you can see from the away end. Salford fans sang "Pikeys give us a wave".

 

[SSB]

Basically "where's your caravan?" is off limits, one would suspect.

We’ll have to be careful if Andy Carroll plays on Sunday then.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Apparently there are a few traveller caravans parked on a hill outside the ground which you can see from the away end. Salford fans sang "Pikeys give us a wave".

There's a big Hungry Horse pub* and a few other bits and bobs up there and you walk down the hill to the ground. Remember it well from when we played them in the League Cup and Akinfenwa was playing up front for them - "Whale is a Wolves Fan, Whale is a Wolves Fan"

*I may have demolished their largest steak dish in about 15 minutes, much to the horror of Kenny...

 

[Kenny]

Football in 2019 (hoping its fake, really hoping its fake)

 

[Johnny75]

I think that's sadly true.

 

[Kenny]

Ole turning into a bad Jose tribute at Man Utd

v Alkmaar - Shots on Target = 0
v Partizan - Shots on Target = 1 (and that was a penalty)

So 2 Euro games and zero shots on target from open play (but 4 points so not all bad...)

 

[Tony Towner]

Football in 2019 (hoping its fake, really hoping its fake)

Media agency now sacked

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Can't say I am sad to see that. If that Agency thought that was what football was about they then had no place trying to promote the sport or indeed Manchester City.

 

[Kenny]

They will be replaced by another. City will just be annoyed that 1) It got picked up and people laughed at them and 2) It makes it look like City are saying the 3 teams in their group are teeny tiny and no one has ever heard of them.

The campaign the agency were running would have been approved by City.

 

[Tredman]

This is brilliant article, everyone should read it. When I’m next on a pc I will copy and paste it for all:


This is racism in English football. This is not a short piece. But it’s an important one. https://theathletic.com/1306397/201...t-its-an-important-one/?source=shared-article

 

[Kenny]

"Coby Rowe says he is fine.

It’s Thursday night training at Haringey Borough and the sessions are intense. As a Saturday game against Horsham in the FA Trophy draws closer, competition for starting spots is fierce.

Rowe is 24 years old. He is a defender who has been at the club for five years and is thought of highly by everyone. He is training tonight in a red Jordan Brand headband and puts himself about skilfully in a rondo session, then later in a seven v seven game in a box with a goal in each corner.

It’s an enjoyable session, full of the type of jokes and camaraderie that makes football such an enjoyable game. The Haringey manager Tom Loizou is on hand to point out the many players that make up his team as he chooses his match-day squad of 17. One player has Champions League experience through the Cyrpiot League, another turned down a professional contract with a Scottish Premier League club to stay in London and help his father recover from kidney illness. One came from Belgium, one more was formerly on Brentford’s books, another, a mercurial forward who nets twice in the session, gets described as “like a speedboat without a driver”.

All of these players are talented. But a number of them will not play against Horsham, still scarred and hurt from the events of last Saturday. During the FA Cup fourth qualifying round game that day against Yeovil Town of the National League, objects were thrown on to the pitch and players were subjected to alleged racial abuse. The team from the Isthmian League Premier Division club — in the seventh tier of English football — courageously walked off in protest and the match was abandoned.

It came just five days after England players were racially abused in Bulgaria, rightly prompting criticism and derision nationwide and from many in the game. But as the Haringey incident and many others this season have shown, English football is not immune to racism. It is a problem from the Premier League to Sunday League and a lot of players, coaches and fans don’t think anywhere near enough is being done to combat it.

“The very serious function of racism is distraction,” said author Toni Morrison and Haringey are a club distracted from preparing for a football game.

“My head is with the players at the moment,” Loizou, their manager, tells The Athletic. “At moments like this, sometimes it’s a question of who motivates the motivator and at the moment, that’s my coaching staff.”

The Haringey goalkeeper Valery Pajetat was the first to report the abuse last weekend, telling match officials he had been spat at and had rocks pelted at him. Rowe has also said he was racially abused.

Haringey were scheduled to have a game this past Tuesday, but asked to postpone it as a number of players were still affected by the weekend’s events. Following the FA Cup committee’s decision that the club’s original fixture against Yeovil will be replayed on Tuesday at Haringey’s ground, it is unsure when those players will return.
From left, Haringey’s Richards, McDonald, Loizou and Rowe

Thursday night’s session was football being played in the shadow of racism, and like many football clubs at this level, it is the community that is helping Haringey through it. The club’s coaching staff are volunteers and during training, a number of locals move in and out of the pitch, grabbing balls, filling up water bottles and keeping things ticking.

During the two hours The Athletic spends at the club, people repeatedly say the place is “like a family”. One player calls Loizou “Dad” and asks why he didn’t give him extra money for a recent birthday as a joke. Haringey Borough is first and foremost a community space and the community is trying its best to keep things business as usual.

Loizou is also keen to stress that while last weekend’s events were notable, it was not the first time Haringey players have been subjected to racist abuse. Situated in north London and with links to many of the local colleges, the club is a melting pot of a football club. The chairman Aki Achillea is Greek Cypriot, Loizou is half-Greek, half-Jamacian and reels off a selection of racist incidents his players have encountered over the years. Goalkeepers being told they catch the ball “like a monkey”, pregnant partners of players being referred to as “black slags”, and the recurring monkey chants and noises.

“We’ve had it for years at this football club. We’ve suffered it loads of times,” he says. “No matter how many times you complain about it… we’re just a small club. It feels like no one cares. When we do report it, it doesn’t get any feedback. Normally when there’s racism at this football club, we’re the ones getting punished for it, because of my players reacting.”

Despite running a football club operating with the low-level hum of racism in the background, Loizou says, as recently as a month ago, he didn’t believe abandoning games was a viable option.

“I didn’t intentionally walk on the pitch to take my side off,” he says. “It’s the missiles and the spitting is the reason I went on there. It’s when I heard…

“I heard it once. Other people are saying they heard it. A lot of people are denying it. I don’t know if there’s any evidence to back it up because we had no cameras there. I saw enough to know that my players were right to walk off.

“If you put the racial abuse to one side: do you get spat at on the street? Do you get hit by a bottle and wait for the second and third one? Do you wait for protocol?

“It was my decision as I was walking across to get those players off because what upset me most was Coby Rowe. A 24-year-old gentle giant who has never sworn at anyone, never had a cross word with anyone.

“Last season, we played against Wimbledon in the FA Cup and I gave him five minutes. This year, all year, what he’s been looking forward to is that, and his experience was spoilt.”

Rowe says he is fine. He is sitting with his Haringey captain Rakim Richards (29 years old, 10 years with the club), and a team-mate Anthony McDonald (28 years old, nine years with the club).

“I feel a bit run down to be fair,” he laughs. “It’s been a mad week. I feel tired, I’ve been at work all week and I’ve just had no time to rest, really. I feel physically and mentally drained.”

Rowe is a teaching assistant for children with learning disabilities.

“Hectic,” McDonald chimes in.

“All of us have had that effect,” adds Richards. “It is mentally draining. You’re constantly thinking about what’s happened and if you go on to social media that’s another battle in itself.”

“I try and stay away from social media,” says McDonald. “Sometimes I go on social media and see comments that get to you straight away.”

Richards admits it can be hard to explain the effects of racism to those who haven’t lived it. McDonald admits when he has been victim in the past he “just gets angry”.

“I couldn’t even tell you how many people have asked how I am,” says Rowe. “And I’ve just kind of said “I’m fine” because there’s no point in wasting my time trying to explain to people who don’t…

His voice trails off.

“It’s gonna sound stupid and people might laugh and what not, but my mum’s white and she’s asked and I say I’m fine because — I know it’s my mum and I can talk about things like that — but realistically there’s no point,” he says. “Yeah, she’s got children who are mixed-race and yeah she was married to a black man but she still can’t know how it can affect a person and no one will unless it’s happened to them.

“This week I’ve just nodded my head and said: ‘Yeah I’m fine’, because I can’t be arsed and it’s getting a bit frustrating now.”

It’s important to note that Haringey are more than this. They don’t want to be known as the flavour of the month in the Weekly Racism Digest.

They are a team who have gone from strength to strength in recent years and have triumphed to reach the FA Cup first round. They boast under-23 and under-18 teams and a growing women’s team.

“In football, we need to stand together when something is wrong,” says Pajetat, the goalkeeper, after Thursday’s session where he’s been coaching some youth team players. He says he is trying to draw a line under last week’s events and he wants to credit the Yeovil captain Lee Collins for trying to talk to fans and personally apologising to him.

“I think things in the country will change if everyone stands together and says ‘No’ to people that come to football and bully or try to be racist. Together, we can say no and things can change.”

Perhaps Saturday was the start of that.

“This is a unique club,” says Loizou as players depart Coles Park.

He’s right, but the problems run far deeper than the ones this brave team has faced.

For those who have been living with racist abuse, there was no surprise about events at Coles Park. No profound sense of shock. This had been on the cards for some time.

Troy Townsend, development officer at the equality and inclusion organisation Kick It Out, had spoken earlier this year of the game being a “ticking time bomb”, particularly at the lower levels. He pointed to players feeling frustrated, vulnerable, and predicted the time was close when a team would leave the pitch in protest. Those words have proved depressingly prophetic.
England’s players talk on the sidelines after their game was stopped for racist abuse from the crowd

There was an irony that Haringey’s response came only five days after England’s players had been subjected to monkey chants and Nazi salutes at Sofia’s Vasil Levski Stadium, an arena already partially closed after incidents of racist abuse from Bulgaria supporters in their Euro 2020 qualifiers against Kosovo and the Czech Republic.

Amid the revulsion at everything the visiting players endured that night, and for all Gareth Southgate’s post-match reminders of problems closer to home, it was too easy to assume the moral high ground.

“We hammered Bulgaria, but they’re probably sniggering now, saying: ‘Hold on a minute, you’re preaching high and mighty, but look at you now,’” said Townsend. “We’re not in a good place. We’ve got nothing to sing and dance about in terms of how we challenge other nations. This has been festering for far too long.

“People don’t understand the real impact of being degraded because of the colour of your skin. Or when you are being victimised on a constant basis, the language being used having deep historical meaning. It’s pretty horrendous. When, finally, we saw Haringey walk off the pitch, I was like: ‘Well done. It’s an FA Cup game. Maybe people will take a bit of notice now.’”

And yet the roll call of shame continues to be updated regardless. Marcus Rashford, Paul Pogba, Tammy Abraham and Reading’s Yakou Meite had already suffered racial abuse on social media this season, but, away from the relative anonymity offered by Twitter and Instagram, the sheer number of incidents reported from games simply mounts by the week.

The Football Association continue to investigate an incident in which the Dover forward Inih Effiong was subjected to alleged abuse after scoring in a National League game at Hartlepool in September.

On the same afternoon Haringey took their stance, Northampton Town of League Two indicated there had been alleged discriminatory chanting from Salford supporters during the game at Sixfields, while Bedfordshire Police launched an investigation into two allegations of racist and indecent songs from the Bristol City section during a game at Luton.

In Scotland, Hearts insisted they would ban anyone found guilty of abusing the Rangers forward, Alfredo Morelos, after footage circulated of supporters screaming abuse at the Colombian in the aftermath of his first-half equaliser at Tynecastle.

The next day Manchester United stewards ejected one fan over alleged racist abuse during the draw with Liverpool at Old Trafford, a fixture played over the Premier League’s “No Room for Racism” weekend. Belgian police, having been alerted by their Merseyside counterparts in Genk, would remove an offensive banner depicting Divock Origi, and unfurled by a Liverpool fan, at the Luminus Arena on Wednesday night.

“They were asking if anyone knew who had brought the banner in and put it up, but everyone denied all knowledge,” a fan sitting close by told The Athletic. “It’s not the first time it’s been at a game. It was in the stadium in Madrid throughout the Champions League final.”

Having studied CCTV, officers were subsequently able to identify a male fan in the lower section. He was detained after the game, and his details taken prior to release, as the police consider their next move. The club intend to take action.

These are just the higher profile incidents. Arran Williams, Kick It Out’s northern grassroots officer, turns up for work on a Monday morning grimly braced for the weekend update from his two reporting officers, their latest collated testimonies fielded from junior to veterans’ football. They have had incidents filed where children as young as six have been abused on the field.

“How do you explain to a six-year-old? How do they process it?” says Williams. “We are there to try and give some form of victim support, whether it is to the children or the parents, the coaches or their team-mates.

“Based on the reports we receive, you’ll not escape this issue at any level, or any age group. It’s not like you can think: ‘I can play under-21s football and at least I won’t get racially abused.’ It happens everywhere. And these people, they tell us, don’t feel protected. We’ve reached the tipping point with their frustration.”

Reports of discrimination rose 32 per cent, from 319 to 422, in the 2018-19 season according to Kick It Out’s latest annual summary. Racism remained the most common form of discrimination in both professional and grassroots football, constituting 65 per cent of those cases reported, up from 43 per cent on the previous year.

That increase could reflect a more confident approach to flagging incidents — via its anonymised app, email, telephone, website or social media reporting system — but still indicates the need to educate and apply appropriate sanctions.

It is the depressing backdrop to which the Charlton striker Lyle Taylor, who was racially abused after a League One game at Wimbledon earlier this year, instinctively rejects the latest “stupid hashtag (campaign) that goes out on social media” and, instead, insists: “nothing is actually being done.”

The sheer number of reported incidents would suggest Raheem Sterling’s seizure of the debate, with a single social media post last December accusing the media of “fuelling racism”, has failed to stem the flow.

But the England forward’s decision to spread his message having been the victim of alleged racist abuse in a defeat by Chelsea the previous evening still represented a watershed moment.

“It always needed a player, or players, of stature to say something and take that kind of stance,” says Chris Ramsey, a veteran of more than 40 years in the game as player, coach and manager, and currently Queens Park Rangers’ technical director.
Ramsey says that elite players are more able to speak out now than in the past

“Nowadays, clubs are paying millions of pounds for players, and also giving them huge wages. In the old days, if you were a player who said something, you could quite easily be chloroformed and never heard of again. People were frightened. They were not in an economic situation where they could afford to risk their job.

“It would be the same now for those who play for smaller teams. You’re going to get gagged as soon as you start opening your mouth, and people at the lower level cannot afford to lose their job. But if you’re worth £100 million to a club and getting paid £80,000-a-week on a four-year deal, what are the club going to say?

“They’re not going to say anything. If they get dropped, it will just highlight the fact that they’re being dropped for their views on something as large as this. And fans are not going to have it. Raheem stuck his neck out. It’s about time more people started doing it.”

Gavin Rose, manager of Dulwich Hamlet in the sixth-tier National League South, watched his friend Anton Ferdinand’s career suffer in the aftermath of his clash with John Terry while playing for QPR against Chelsea at Loftus Road back in late 2011. The Chelsea defender was alleged to have called the home player “a fucking black cunt”, but later argued he had actually been repeating what he believed Ferdinand had accused him of saying on the pitch."

A five-day trial at Westminster magistrates’ court the following summer absolved Terry of racially abusing his opposite number, though he was subsequently found guilty at an FA hearing who imposed a four-game ban and £220,000 fine.

“But it was Anton’s career which suffered massively after that incident,” says Rose. “And not just on the pitch. There was victimisation, threats to his family. A lot of the fears players felt around that time, Anton lived them. So credit to Raheem for being brave enough to say how he feels. It’s not just black players, either. There are white players speaking up and saying it’s not good enough. That makes the message even more powerful.”

Ramsey suffered everything from monkey chants to being pelted with bananas during playing stints at Bristol City, Brighton, Swindon and Southend, before embarking upon a coaching career that has taken him from Tottenham Hotspur’s academy to QPR via England’s under-20s.

He has been told what was allegedly shouted at Coby Rowe after Yeovil’s converted penalty last Saturday, describing it as “a disgrace” for all that, back in his own playing days, it would have been “considered normal”.

“We’ve tried everything,” he says. “We can keep going with this softly, softly approach, putting up clenched fists and saying ‘don’t let them win’, but (the abuse) will just carry on. They’re still winning. They’re still saying whatever they want.

“It’ll only change when the economics of the game are affected, and rich people running the sport see sponsors pulling out or crowds going down, or when they’re getting negative publicity. That’s when the stakeholders will accelerate action.

“At some stage there had to be a drastic measure, like walking off the pitch, which forces the issues because the money is affected. Imagine if that happened in a high-profile, televised Premier League fixture. A game people are watching all round the world. As soon as that happens, people will start to really change what they do.”

In that respect, the sight of England’s victory in Sofia twice being stopped while the referee followed the UEFA protocol at least highlighted the issue, even if they did not end up leaving the field. Back at QPR, Ramsey’s club, the under-18s had walked off the pitch in a pre-season game at AD Nervion in Spain after complaining to the referee that they had been subjected to monkey noises and racist abuse on three separate occasions during the second half.

The coach, Paul Furlong, eventually called them off. The Seville-based team subsequently claimed the abuse had been provoked by a QPR player spitting in the face of an opponent, an accusation that has been rejected by the Championship club.

“That was in August,” says Troy Townsend. “Now, in late October, they’re still in a battle with FIFA, the Spanish federation and UEFA to see who is actually going to take control of that situation and make a judgement. Everybody is running away from the story.

“That’s what I mean when I talk about diluting racism. The account of those QPR players is being questioned. ‘Is what you’re saying true? Is it factual you were called the n-word, or did you spit at the lad first?’ If those allegations about spitting, that have come out of the Spanish side, are true, then why were they not flagged up first? Why did they only crop up once QPR made it common knowledge that their lads had been racially abused?”

Rose would have emulated Tom Loizou and called his players off the pitch had he witnessed them enduring a similar situation. He believes the abuse, which might at first glance appear kneejerk, is premeditated.

“I do actually think there is a thought process to it,” he says, sitting in his office at Champion Hill, which will host Carlisle United in the first round of the FA Cup next month. “There are so many strands to the racism we all experience, though. There’s the person who turns up to football and starts making these disgusting comments. There are the officials at the clubs or stewards who never seem to see anything. Then you have the FA who always seem to drag their feet. So is it just the person who makes the comment that is racist?

“You can blame the perpetrators but, beyond that, you have to look at the fact the punishments in football are giving them carte blanche to act in this way. If the punishment was stronger, it’d be a bigger deterrent. Players shouldn’t be put in that position where they feel they have to walk off the pitch. Managers shouldn’t be in that position where they have to call their players off the pitch. It shouldn’t get to that. But if players are at a point where they feel the officials aren’t helping them, that the game isn’t helping them, they’ll feel forced to act in this way. We’ve had so many incidents which could have been handled better.

“We’re in a weird place. People have mentioned Brexit having played a part in it all, splitting us as a society, but how does someone change their mentality within the space of a few months? Or even a year? How do you grow up not being racist, and then all of a sudden these views come pouring out?

“It’s something much deeper than Brexit. Maybe it’s been suppressed in people over the years and they’ve just been more politically correct, publicly. In the 80s, saying ‘you black so and so’ was seen as a slip of the tongue. In the 90s, people became more politically correct and understood they couldn’t say that. But was it an act? How you really feel inside is always there. It is depressing. Who has got the time to be feeling all these thoughts? Surely your life is more than race. It’s sad.”

Descend lower down the pyramid and the picture is just as troubling. One former chairman of a non-League club, who did not want to be named, recalled an incident where racism had split his squad.

“The manager I appointed brought in seven or eight black players who were really good,” he says. “That’s what I wanted him to do — find these kids for nothing. The first season we finished seventh or eighth and it was a start. An improvement. But everyone was getting twitchy. (They) thought we should be better than that.

“The second season started and one of the players, after they’d lost a game, got up in the dressing-room and said: ‘The trouble with this club is you lot’ and pointed to all the black players. ‘Your lot,’ he shouted. ‘It’s your lot’s fault.’ The manager said: ‘What do you mean by that, ‘your lot’?’ ‘Well… it’s the players you’ve brought into this club.’”

Then there is grassroots level. Ben Rosser, a former policeman in Nottingham, founded Pythian FC in the city’s suburb of New Basford and works closely with the local community to engage and inspire BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) groups.

The club boasts over 3,500 youth members and has thriving boxing, dance and music scenes, working heavily with the local Romani, Kurdish and Eastern European communities, with football another key outlet.

Pythian have two teams playing in the most competitive local senior league, and yet saw their own players racially abused during a fixture against a local Polish side, Polonia, towards the end of last season. Their opponents were subsequently sanctioned by the FA.

“I’ve seen it from both sides: from my own black players being abused by Polonia, to the community setting where I’ve seen the Romany population being targeted,” says Rosser, whose club won the FA’s community project of the year award in 2018. “It’s endemic in society. People may have their blinkers on and only look straight, so they don’t see it.

“Those with a more holistic view will actually see how things are going down. You can see it in every facet of society. It’s ingrained from back in the day. It’s not always as up front as it used to be. It can be subtler now, maybe in the decision-making process: your face doesn’t fit; you don’t go up the ladder.

“That’s similar to football. Look at the number of black coaches. It’s more cleverly done these days, not as blatant as it may have been back in the day. For coaches or managers wanting to climb the ladder, there are always obstructions, always issues.”

Rose, whose first-team coaching staff are all black, has been at Dulwich for over a decade, kickstarting the professional careers of youngsters who have developed under his tutelage, and leading Hamlet to two promotions in that time.

In that context, it is surprising that he has only ever been offered jobs that would constitute a shift sideways, or roles as reserve team managers or assistants only slightly further up the ladder. It has left him questioning everything, from his perception of the treatment he receives from officials in comparison to that offered to white counterparts, to the sense that some in the game struggle with the successes he has instigated at the south London club.

“It’s something I’ve not really spoken about before, because we just get the old: ‘Here we go. The race card…’ So you don’t say anything because you think it’s going to be counterproductive,” he says. “But you get to a point in life and you think, you know what, say what it is.

“This is my 11th season and we haven’t had any offers. That feels remarkable. It gets to the point where you start thinking, if we just walk away from the game, there’ll definitely be a generation who will wonder: ‘What is the point?’ A lot of ex-pros have walked away.

“I remember speaking to Andy Cole when he retired and he wasn’t interested in managing. ‘The game’s so racist. I’m not interested.’ He actually felt defeated by the thought of being a manager.”

Cole was named as a forward coach at Southend United on Thursday, joining the staff put together by Sol Campbell, one of five BAME managers in the Football League.

“I see it as a challenge to try to overcome some of the institutional stuff, as much as I can,” adds Rose. “I’ve experienced racism in my time. Some has been casual. At the start some didn’t know what they were saying because they were so much older.

“Others did, that half casual stuff. There have been people who were a bit uncomfortable working with a black manager. They don’t know why. It just doesn’t add up to them. It was as if the better we did as a club, the more they started to see us being too instrumental in the success. ‘It’s run by a black manager.’

“That seems to get people’s backs up. We spoke (as a staff) about that in-house, asking ourselves whether we should make it a problem or just get over it as best we can. We’ve ended up not getting into too much direct conflict with these people because it’s a bit of a waste of energy. But nobody wants to speak about it. Nobody would want us to say this, either. But if you can’t say what’s actually happening, then there’s no point.

“It’s getting to the point where maybe we should be talking about things that ain’t right so people understand. Let’s call it out. It has to start from within clubs. Clubs, supporters, everyone needs to be aware what is acceptable and what’s not.

“There might just be a general ignorance. Maybe it is. But it’s got to a point now where, you know what? The generation before were scared to say things. I get that. But if we continue in that mentality, that aids bad behaviour. People need to realise they will be called out for bad behaviour. If that doesn’t embarrass them, then what will?”

Pace and power. It’s a phrase that’s so commonplace it almost slips our consciousness and goes undetected when brought up on TV or radio. Without context, those words seem entirely innocuous. But on closer inspection, when put into the context of black athletes, it is a common trope that signifies a deeper problem with language and words.

It’s a problem that is hard to quantify. We know of the overt racist words, noises and terms. But it’s harder to pin down the covert ones, the ways in which language subtly hints at certain things, plays off certain stereotypes and shifts the Overton window so that society accepts these stereotypes as true. Pace and power is the epitome of that.

The former England under-21 striker Marvin Sordell tells The Athletic that the phrase paints a picture of black athletes being “limited”. By focusing on Thierry Henry’s pace or Romelu Lukaku’s power — the word “beast” is another that is used all the time — it gives the impression that they are not intelligent players, just physical specimens.

“It takes away from the person’s true abilities and it demeans them to something less than what they are,” he says. “At times, it can make you feel stupid. Say Paul Pogba, who is always described by his physical attributes as opposed to his technical and tactical attributes.

“Usually I’d get described as a fast and strong player. Coaches would just see me as a player that could just run rather than a player who had intelligence and could understand the game in a multitude of ways.”

The former Wolves goalkeeper Matt Murray shares a similar experience, often categorised by his physical attributes first and his less quantifiable qualities second. “I think growing up, being 6ft 5in, mixed-raced, decent build. That was the bit that was always focused on by coaches. I was always told to use it as an advantage,” he tells The Athletic.

“When I was younger, there was one coach in particular that used to talk about the physicality and whatnot. He didn’t mean it in a bad way at all but he knew that people were intimidated by it so you started to play on that.”

Murray says he chooses his words carefully since becoming a pundit but admits that if he sees a player being lazy in a certain aspect of their game, or using speed or power in a certain moment, then he isn’t afraid to use those phrases.

“I’m always really careful about my wording now. But, at the same time, if I look at a player — white, black, Asian — and think that one minute they can bust a gut to try and score a goal but can’t track their marker back, and I see it as lazy, then I won’t be afraid of using the term lazy,” he says.

“I don’t think you can be scared as a pundit as long as you can back it up. We can’t be afraid of language. There are certain players that are pacey, there are certain players that are powerful, be they white, black or Asian, men or women, whatever they may be, they may be athletic and it may be their biggest plus point. Everything is about context.”

But it goes beyond discussing a black player in terms of their physicality. A perhaps more damaging word often bandied around black players is “attitude”.

Graeme Souness was criticised last month when on television he suggested that the attitude of the striker Moise Kean prompted Juventus to sell him to Everton, saying “maybe his off-the-field activities are not the best”.

The desire and attitude of Paul Pogba also come into question. The midfielder was criticised for having a light blue streak in his hair the day before the Manchester derby and called “ridiculous”. Pogba had previously been away on international duty with France.

Sordell believes this word and way of framing stereotypes is much more damaging than the tropes of a player’s attributes.

“It’s something that goes beyond football and into society in the sense that because a player may be seen to be doing things differently, and they may be seen to be questioning authority, then a black player will be perceived to have an attitude problem,” he explains. “They’re treated like they are ungrateful for the situation that they’ve been given and I think at times, you forget that all these players and people have earned what they’ve got in life. And that is one of the biggest issues. Players are getting labelled because they are supposedly stepping out of line.”

Both Murray and Sordell have pointed at the media as one of the biggest factors in fuelling certain stereotypes. Murray highlights Sterling’s Instagram post of December 2018 — where he highlighted the different language used to describe white and black players — as a landmark moment, the time the media stopped to take a look at the language and framing devices they use to tell stories.

“Sterling is the best example ever,” says Murray. “Everybody wanted to create this narrative about him. He’s a really good human being and with him calling the media out and having the strength and guts to do that, everybody now is having to look at how they write things.
“And once Sterling started talking about the words that are used and the confirmation bias and the profiling, it made you think ‘You know what, it’s true.’

It is Thursday in Birkenhead and the sun is shining for years five and six from Devonshire Park School and Prenton Primary as they file into that afternoon’s classroom, the Tranmere Rovers Supporters Club bar.

The mood is matched by the pictures of John Aldridge celebrating one of his 140 goals for the club and the motivational quotes painted on the walls: this is going to be fun.

Today’s teacher is Paul Kearns, the deputy chief executive of Show Racism the Red Card, although he will be ably assisted by five members of the Tranmere Rovers first team, including Liverpool academy product Darren Potter, and the former Scotland international Chris Iwelumo, one of the charity’s many ambassadors.

The lesson starts with Kearns showing the a closely-cropped picture of a child’s face, a black face. He then asks them to get into groups to answer five questions: is this a boy or a girl, where are they from, what is their religion, how old are they and what is their name.

Five minutes of excited chatter and scribbling later, Kearns goes around the room for the answers.

The room is divided on the child’s gender, thinks they are either from Africa or India, believes they could be a Buddhist, Christian, Hindu or Muslim, are aged between five and 11 and are called one of a dozen names.

Paul shows them the full picture of a little boy, sat in a classroom, in his school uniform. The boy in the picture is Tommy, he is 10 and his dad is from London and his mum is from Manchester, where Tommy was born and still lives. It is obvious now.

But things were not quite so clear to Tommy when a group of older children told him to go back to where he came from a few months ago. Confused, he did as he was told and walked two minutes down the road to where he lives.

A few days later, a larger group of youths told him to “go back to his own country”. Now this really confused Tommy and he told his parents, who told the school, who told Show Racism the Red Card, the country’s leading anti-racism education charity.

Set up by Newcastle United fan Ged Grebby in 1996, thanks in part to a donation from Newcastle’s then-goalkeeper Shaka Hislop, the charity has been using football to teach businesses, children, teachers and anyone else who wants to learn about the dangers of judging books by their covers for nearly 25 years.
In the Past fortnight alone, they have held similar anti-racism workshops at Brighton, Huddersfield, Rotherham, Southend, Swindon and Wigan.

Sometimes, these workshops include a stadium tour and an additional session on hate crime but this visit is comprised of a discussion about racism, a film featuring the likes of Ryan Giggs, Gareth Southgate and Trent Alexander-Arnold, who went down well with this crowd, and a “press conference” with Iwelumo and the five Tranmere players.

The children loved it and as they queued up at the end for selfies and signatures, there was no doubt this session had reached them in a way that a slogan on a T-shirt or advertising hoarding can never do.

“I hate racism,” says Holly from Prenton Primary, while her friend Faye assures The Athletic that if she ever witnesses anybody being racially abused she will “report it” and “give that person a hug”.

Football, as an industry, should be proud of this work but it does not always feel that way to Show Racism the Red Card’s small team.

“The Premier League is currently running its No Room for Racism campaign but in 24 years of working in this space they’ve never once picked up the phone to speak to us,” Grebby tells The Athletic. “And if you look at the campaign, it’s all about image; there’s no substance to it. The last few weeks have been quite eye-opening.

“The day after the Bulgaria-England game me and my staff were up to our eyes in requests for comments from the media but in the days after the incidents that occurred in the English game last weekend, nothing. Not one call. It’s easier for us to slag off the Bulgarians than look closer to home.”

Two weeks ago, the charity celebrated its annual Wear Red Day fundraiser, with about 1,000 schools and businesses taking part. “I know there have been big demonstrations against Trump but I can’t think of a bigger anti-racism event than ours,” said Grebby.

“But the national media hardly touched it. You would have thought after Bulgaria that the British public would have been interested in a positive story about action against racism. Our campaign has never been funded by the Premier League, English Football League or the FA, our only football funding comes from the Professional Footballers’ Association, with the rest coming from trade unions, local authorities and anything we can raise ourselves.”

On the other hand, Kick It Out, a campaigning organisation, is funded by the professional game and, as a result, has a much higher media profile than Show Racism the Red Card. This has led some to wonder if the two organisations would be better off if they joined forces, and budgets, and spoke with one, clear voice.

“I am often asked why both of us exist,” admits Grebby. “But that’s like asking Arsenal why they exist when Spurs are next door. There is a need for both of us. If we weren’t here, Kick It Out wouldn’t get twice as much money, there would just be half the money there is now.“

It says much about the lack of faith in the authorities that, as news filtered through that Haringey had left the pitch last Saturday, many initially feared they might end up being sanctioned. That prospect had certainly flashed across Troy Townsend’s mind, not least because a few years ago, he had withdrawn an under-17 side after they were “bullied, beaten up and threatened by opposing players and their parents” during a cup game.

His side were eventually charged with failing to complete the 90 minutes and thrown out of the competition. He had to agree to the charge at a hearing, held six weeks later, with the authorities eventually opting against taking action against his team.

“So I feared Haringey could possibly be on a similar charge,” he says. “But if that had been implemented, it would have been mayhem from the FA that maybe they couldn’t have recovered from.

“It’s important to acknowledge that sometimes people at grassroots level get punished for doing the right thing, for protecting young people and looking after their welfare, for not allowing them to be victimised on our pitches up and down the country.

“If I’ve got a story like that, I know others will too. Where they believe they’ve done the right thing to look after the welfare of their players, and they’ve been punished for it. If football is going to make a change, it needs to look at its rules and how it protects people who have been in this situation far too many times.”

Kick It Out’s Williams cites the case of the Padiham match at Congleton last season, when the visitors walked off the pitch after their teenage goalkeeper, the former Burnley trainee Tony Aghayere, was racially abused during a game at the Richborough Estates Stadium.

The incident was initially dealt with by the respective Lancashire and Cheshire football associations, before being handed over to an independent regulatory commission convened under FA rules. Both clubs were duly charged under FA rule E20, relating to their responsibility to control players, officials and spectators. Congleton, whose spectators were apparently responsible for the alleged racist abuse, were fined £160. Padiham were fined £165 for abandoning the game.

“We have to look at football rules,” says Williams. “Not the laws of the game, but the rules that govern each league and the FA rules themselves, to understand if they are inclusive. Do they protect people, whether multi-millionaire professional players or grassroots players? To be on the receiving end of that awful abuse potentially week in, week out… these people tell us football doesn’t protect them. That football doesn’t provide them with sufficient or adequate resources to protect themselves if they are faced with racism and discrimination on the football pitch.”

The FA’s position on Haringey would suggest attitudes have changed in that regard but the decision to have the fixture replayed next week has dismayed some.

“It’s weak, another situation where another governing body are skirting around the issue rather than dealing with it,” says former Watford man Sordell. “I don’t think the FA are showing strong enough resolve and I’m not sure how seriously they take it. It seems like it’s going to continue and they’re going to hope that it’s going to go away. Not that racism will vanish, but ‘go away’ in the sense that we all get tired of talking about it.”

That lack of faith is reflected elsewhere. Do those most affected actually believe that the authorities will be tougher in future on such issues?

Rose, the Dulwich manager, is doubtful and describes the sanctions handed down in recent years as “embarrassing”.

“When people point out the inconsistencies, that Nicklas Bendtner gets fined more by UEFA for advertising a bookmaker on his pants, instead of admitting they may have misjudged things and rethinking the level of the sanctions they shrug their shoulders,” he says. “As a black man, you think it’s a joke. You do. They want you to feel demoralised. It makes a mockery of the crime. They’re almost laughing at us.”

“There was a banana which landed on a football pitch in the Premier League in 2018 (thrown from the Tottenham Hotspur support at Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang as he celebrated scoring for Arsenal at the Emirates), 30 years plus after John Barnes and that fabulous image of him kicking a banana and challenging racism in that way,” says Townsend. “No one called that banana what it was. If you were to poll 100 black players and ask them the significance of a banana landing in front of them as they celebrate a goal, they will tell you directly its significance. That is a racist incident. It’s racially motivated. But it was called a ‘missile’. So, straight away, those 100 players you asked would feel let down by the game.

“In answer to your question, do I have faith they’ll deliver tougher punishments? No, because they failed at probably the biggest moment. Yes, a week later with the Sterling situation, Chelsea banned the individuals, but even the individual (alleged to have racially abused the Manchester City winger) got off with the racial aspect because there wasn’t enough evidence to say he used the words he allegedly had.

“Again, we’re looking at a lack of confidence there. Black players feel let down by the system. Black players feel let down by the ultimate outcomes of these situations and cases. I could go on and on and on. Cyrus Christie has a case still ongoing. Theo Robinson has a case still ongoing. It just seems like we water down racism at its highest level when we could actually send out such strong messages on the topic.”

Then there is the siege mentality that the game has whipped up within clubs who find themselves under the microscope over racial abuse. The FA charged Manchester City’s Bernardo Silva earlier this month over a tweet that compared his team-mate, Benjamin Mendy, to the character on packets of Conguitos chocolates.

The governing body argued that the message brought the game into disrepute and that the Portugal international’s post constituted an “aggravated breach” of its rules on social media behaviour because it appeared to reference the French left-back’s race.

Bernardo could face a lengthy ban. Yet Pep Guardiola’s defence of his player, claiming “it was just a joke” and that “it’s a cartoon and the face is quite similar — the same happened a thousand million times with white people,” prompted dismay amongst some on-lookers.

“You can’t do that,” says Rose, when asked about the City manager’s stance. “It’s a lack of intelligence. Pep is someone, in terms of football, that I totally respect. But once you start speaking on these subjects, you’ve just got to know what you’re saying.

“Forget your team. Forget you’re in a war and you don’t want to lose Bernardo Silva, such a top player. You’ve got to put that to one side. There are so many people who tune in and listen to what you’re saying: it’s no longer a football topic any more. It’s a world topic. He didn’t think through the implications of what he said.

“Even if he’d said: ‘Look, this was ill-advised. They do have a friendly banter, which is acceptable between them – an understanding where there’s no racism involved – but they’ve put it in the public domain, and that will upset a lot of people because of the connotations behind it, so he is sorry…’

“Simply, just say he’s done wrong. He’s been spoken to, whatever. That would have been okay. But it worries me when there always seems to be excuses for this type of behaviour. That’s almost more worrying than the actual act, in my opinion. If you’re Raheem, who has spoken out so much about racism, and your manager comes out and does something totally reverse… you must just wonder: ‘What are we doing?’”

That is a sentiment The Athletic has heard again and again this week from former footballers frustrated that today’s generation are dealing with the rubbish they thought had been sent to landfill and from those still in the game who are convinced the authorities just don’t get it.

They would argue that is unfair.

When asked for a list of all the punishments it has dished out for discrimination over the past decade, UEFA sent The Athletic a 15-page spreadsheet for the clubs it has sanctioned and six pages for the national teams, with a “to be determined” in the space for this month’s Bulgaria-England game. It also pointed out it has two campaigns: Equal Game and No to Racism.

The Football Association tells a similar story, it is running a scheme to increase the representation of Asian communities in the game, has three different programmes designed to boost the number of BAME coaches, is funding grassroots officers at Kick It Out and the Football Supporters’ Association and is working with diverse communities local to Wembley.

The Premier League is proud of its No Room for Racism campaign, now in its second year. It also flags up its work with Kick It Out, as well as the funding it has provided to give extra training to stewards or the political pressure it is exerting on social media companies to take racism more seriously. And it has also just set up an eight-strong BAME Participants’ Advisory Group, chaired by Doncaster manager Darren Moore.

The English Football League says it has led the way on providing more opportunities for BAME coaches and managers in the game, and believes its NFL-style affirmative action recruitment code is resulting in more interviews for posts and more successful applicants, albeit from a very low base and with obvious room for improvement.

The PFA, which provides funding for Kick It Out and Show Racism the Red Card, has been praised by some for its player-led #Enough campaign against discriminatory abuse on social media platforms.
But those on the receiving end of the abuse or lack of opportunity are not impressed and feel that these programmes and initiatives are weak and ineffective.

“I’m asking for us to stop diluting racism,” says Rose. “Stop making it an afterthought. Really put it into our thought process and hand out the kind of fines that should be reflective, along with the education that needs to go with that.

“Haringey is one thing. But people will come out and say they’ve experienced worse. This isn’t a competition to see who has suffered the worst, but people will come forward and say they have experienced worse and yet nothing has been done.”

As the executive director of Football Against Racism in Europe, Piara Powar is acutely aware of the disconnect between reality and perception but also the sense that the fight against racism is punching below its weight.

Powar, like several others we spoke to for this piece, believes football, certainly in northern and western Europe, is much less racist than it was 20 or more years ago, just as society is more diverse than it once was.

“But it might not feel like that because of our heightened awareness and improved reporting of incidents,” he explains. “And I think there is a link between Brexit and some of the problems we have witnessed in British football, and that link is to do with the national conversation about immigration. We have seen the same thing in the US with Trump.

“If your political leaders are talking about ‘sending people home’ or saying disparaging things about developing countries, you create a poisonous environment and empower others to say similar things or even worse. This is where social media can be problematic, as the conversation, particularly on Twitter, can get very abusive.”

So what should be done?

“I was on a panel at Middlesex on racism and one of the topics we were asked was ‘What are your suggestions’, says Haringey’s Richards.

“We all have our own ideas but it’s a tough one. You can sit there and say ‘fine the club’, but the club’s not being racist, it’s the fans. So do you punish all the fans? Do you sanction the small minority? I think I said: ‘Do something radical’, let’s do something that makes people go ‘Oh why did they do that?’”

For now, the FA’s approach is focused elsewhere and, for all the various governing bodies’ insistence that progress is being made, cynicism persists among those affected most by this curse.

They might point to the fact that, two days after Haringey’s players had taken their stance and departed the turf in their FA Cup qualifying fixture with Yeovil, the draw for the first round proper was broadcast from Maldon & Tiptree, the side second in the Isthmian League North.

Karen Carney and Jermaine Beckford drew the numbers, potentially pitting Haringey up against Hartlepool — a club still under investigation after the alleged racist abuse to which Effiong was subjected in September — and sending their hosts to Leyton Orient.

The Maldon & Tiptree manager, Wayne Brown, was duly interviewed live on television. Brown, now 42, was a journeyman centre-half back in his playing days whose career had taken him from Ipswich to Hull via Colchester.

It had also included a spell in the Championship with Leicester City, which had been curtailed abruptly back in 2010 after he had apparently become embroiled in a heated argument in the dressing-room post-training with his team-mates, including Chris Powell and Lloyd Dyer, after claiming to have voted for the far right British National Party in that year’s general election.

It was alleged that Brown argued ethnic minorities were “killing this country”. The manager at the time, Nigel Pearson, did not pick the defender for the ensuing play-off semi-finals and, with the club opting to deal with the matter internally, Brown never played for Leicester again.

“The FA will fine a club or kick them out of the competition — that’s not solving the problem,” adds Haringey coach Johnny Fitsiou. “Nobody is born racist. It’s a learnt behaviour. So until the FA finds a way to get to the root cause, until they get people to think differently, you’re never going to solve the problem.

“I think the FA needs a different approach. Rather than fining people, they should make clubs invest that money into educational schemes where there are set parameters which they need to adhere to, which will make them get local authorities involved and start an education process that starts at a grassroots level. Until you start getting in at that nitty gritty baby age, you’ve got no chance.”