Aug. 20, 2025
Race, Class, and the Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game
International football is a beloved sport, but beneath the surface lies a legacy shaped by empire, exploitation, and racial hierarchy. In this episode, we explore how major European clubs and leagues benefit from a global system where talent is scouted, commodified, and exploited, and where dark-skinned players face racist abuse.
We dive into the political economy of soccer: the role of FIFA, the Premier League, and global sports markets in maintaining structural imbalances. We look at the ways in which international football mirrors colonial labor systems or even the auction block, and how politics and profit have always been central to the game. Is football still a beautiful game, or a global empire in disguise?
We dedicate this episode to Palestinian footballers. Since October 2023, nearly 440 Palestinian football players and support staff in the West Bank and Gaza have been killed.
Welcome to Unwashed and Unruly, where we show you how history is a crime scene.
Today we'll be talking about the colonial legacy of the Beautiful game, specifically how soccer or international football maintains and perpetuates racial hierarchy, exploitation of players, and huge power profit imbalances.
0:31
From the hand of God to this podcast, I'm your host Lola Michaels with Professor past Ezra Saeed.
Hi, everybody.
Hi, Lola.
And narrative Savage Cam Cruise.
Oi oi oi.
You can reach us at unwashedunruly@gmail.com.
0:50
Historical hierarchies and global inequalities continue to shape football today.
European power centers dominate the game, while the semi colonial world serve as a source of talent, labor and spectacle.
Soccer has always been entangled with empire, capitalism and global control, with dark skinned players subject to abuse and wealthy clubs extracting value from poor nations.
1:14
Broadly speaking, let's go over a little bit about what we know in international football.
The former colonial powers benefit from exploiting players from their former colonies.
So you see many African born players playing for European clubs.
When these teams start scouting, they're recruiting young boys who are then bound by these exploitative contracts, bought and sold literally without adequate protection or even education.
1:41
And then meanwhile local football teams and systems in the semi colonial world are underfunded and underdeveloped.
So let's break down a little bit of this recruitment structure, these kind of neo colonial labor flows and commodification of players because I think that's at the centerpiece here, right, Ezra?
1:58
That's true, but let me begin with a couple of things.
One, I'm going to call it football.
I'm not going to call it soccer because it's played with a ball and it's played with the feet.
There's a logic to it, and most of the world calls it football.
The second thing.
Bringing you guys a practical analysis on this podcast.
2:17
The second thing is I struggled with how to focus this episode a bit because there's actually two things I want to focus on.
One is the plight of these foreign players who are brought into Europe, and the real plight in some ways are those who never get to play.
2:33
And the second thing is there's also the domestic market and it's a highly class and racially stratified game where the players tend to come from the lower classes.
And there's also British born black players, French born black players who are not foreign players.
2:53
So you also get the class dynamics within each of these countries.
And the way I thought to begin it is to actually not talk about football at all, but to talk about cricket, a game that I'm not going to explain.
Fascinating to watch though.
3:09
I think it is, but others may disagree.
I disagree.
There's a wonderful book from the early 1960s by Trinidadian Marxist Clr James called Beyond a Boundary, and if you haven't read it, I would highly recommend you read it.
The boundary here refers to the cricket field.
3:27
It is part memoir, art, sports book art, Marxist analysis, and absolutely phenomenal.
And in there he plays on this line from Rudyard Kipling, where Kipling says what should they know of England, who only England know.
3:47
And Clr James says what do they know of cricket who only cricket know?
And his point was to understand cricket in this case, or sports more broadly.
You cannot divorce them from the social reality and the politics and the culture of the society that they're in, whether that society is a semi colonial society, a colonial society, or even in the imperialist centers.
4:14
So, he writes, we lived in two worlds.
The one was the world of the school, the other the world of the street.
And the one we were taught the virtues of the English gentleman and the other we learned the realities of colonial life.
And I should have clarified that Trinidad was a colony of Bryn.
4:33
The cricket field was a stage on which selected individuals played representative roles which were charged with social significance.
The class and color distinctions which disfigured West Indian society were established on the cricket field.
4:49
And he goes on later to make the point.
Cricket had plunged me into politics long before I was aware of it.
When I did turn to politics, I didn't have too much to learn.
And what he's going on about is the very experience of playing the game, the very experience of being West Indian and black and playing a game dominated by the English, reinforced what he had learned as simply being a young Trinidadian boy and reflected the prejudices and the oppressions and the distinctions in that society.
5:26
So if we move on to football, modern football, it's a game that's dominated by big money.
It's a game that's dominated by glitz and stars.
It was a lot less so in the past, but big money moved into it.
5:44
And in those situations, the talent flows from the third world, from Africa, Latin America into Europe.
That's the elite.
That's where you want to play and you want to play there for an obvious reason, because you will make a lot of money and there is no question that once you do make it into a big club at the top level, you will make a lot of money.
6:12
But the reality is you have untold numbers of young boys in Brazil and Senegal, in Egypt and other countries that have basically given up on anything in life other than playing football.
6:27
And their families have sacrificed everything to play football.
And these are overwhelmingly from very poor backgrounds and 99% of them will never see a professional football pitch.
And many of those who end up in Europe will also never see a professional football pitch.
6:49
That is the sad reality.
So what you're saying is a young player, he's scouted in Ghana, he's offered a trip to a European country to try out, He goes for it.
Maybe he's injured during the tryouts or training, or maybe he's not considered up to snuff or a manager comes in and says you're not needed.
7:11
So that's one question, what happens to him?
And then the second question is, if he does make it, what kind of say or agency does this player actually have over his contract and his transfers and his future?
7:31
I think the best way I can answer that is to use concrete examples.
One of them is a Senegalese player who now plays in the Saudi league named Saudi Omani.
A prolific and brilliant player, he is from a small village in Senegal and in fact, he in some ways was one of the slightly more privileged and that his family were within the leadership of the village.
7:53
But incredible poverty.
He devoted his youth and his family devoted all their resources to him playing football.
And he was scouted and was offered a trip to Europe.
He was offered a trip to join a club named Mets FC in France.
8:11
So of course he's going to jump on that.
Now mind you, I want to be absolutely clear, he has to pay or his family have to pay for that trip.
The club does not pay.
Oh crap, I did not expect that.
And if you're saying that these are poor families, I bet that's probably a real hardship to send these kids to some of these clubs.
8:29
Of course, it's basically your entire life savings.
It's everything.
It's everything you've ever possessed to send your boy there because there's this image that if you make it and it's not an untrue image, it's generational wealth.
It's something that's unimaginable to most people living in those societies.
8:51
So in his case, he scrounged the money together and he made it.
He got to France, but once he landed, he got an injury where he tore his groin.
He was terrified that if he had said anything to anybody about his injury, they would just ship him right back to Senegal.
9:11
And there's the shame of that, but also the fact that you're not going to bring that generational wealth to your family.
So he kept it a secret and he went to practice with it.
And of course, you can't really keep a growing injury a secret when you're told to kick a ball and run around and to do it with deafness and skill.
9:29
It was revealed in his case, the club actually paid for the surgery that he needed and he recovered and became a star.
But there's a reason why he was terrified of telling this, because the reality is, most of the time what you get is the counterexample.
9:49
And the sad thing is, I can't really give you names in the counterexample because these are people who nobody has heard of and nobody will ever hear.
So here's what normally happens.
You are a 16 or 17 year old boy from a small town, let's say in Nigeria or Cameroon or Columbia or Senegal.
10:09
You're identified by a local agent as a talent.
The family will often pay that agent their life savings for the promise of a trial in Europe, usually Belgium, Portugal, Switzerland, sometimes France.
So the agent gets you there if you have an injury, that injury could have been a pre-existing injury, could have been an injury that you got in the course of trial or in the course of practice.
10:36
The club has no ties to you, The agent has no ties to you.
The agents collected his money.
You're a burden now and what you have is a whole slew of young men stranded in these European countries.
They don't speak the language, they have no money, their parents have no money, and the lucky ones are the ones who managed to find a way to make it back.
11:02
That is wild.
So what control or lack of control do players have over their contract and transfers and their future?
OK, so you've made it.
You've made it into the big leagues.
11:17
Legally, you have the control of you cannot be transferred without your approval.
That is the legal term.
If you watch football they literally talk about buying and selling players.
11:36
Do they not use the word trading?
No, they use the term buying and selling.
It is a flesh trade of players.
That's kind of icky.
The people who are on football are some of the ickiest people you will ever run into in your life.
The reality is, while you legally have that control over whether you're transferred or bought or sold, your ability to exercise the control is really determined by how powerful and famous you are.
12:06
And most players aren't that, even if you play for a big club, young player like Harvey Elliott, and this is a white English player from a or a working class background, does not want to leave Liverpool.
He has said that most likely he will be sold this summer because it's not up to him.
12:23
And if he doesn't agree to being sold, what will happen is he'll never get played.
He'll never train with the first team.
He'll get his pay, but his career is over.
Nobody's going to want to quote UN quote buy him because he's now known as a troublemaker.
12:39
What about someone like Messi?
Well, Messi is a very interesting example because you would think somebody like Lionel Messi would have all the power in the world.
He is considered probably the greatest player that ever played the game.
Messi was playing for FC Barcelona.
12:55
It's the club that actually he grew up in.
He moved there from Argentina when he was I think, 14 or 15 years old, and in 2020 he had a clause in his contract that stipulated that at the end of any season he could choose to leave Barcelona for free, provided he informed the club of his decision by a certain date, that date being June 10th, which is the end of the season. 2020 was the COVID season, and because of COVID, the season in Spain was suspended for a few weeks or months, so it didn't end until sometime in August.
13:30
He did not like the direction that Barcelona was heading in as a club.
They just suffered a massive defeat, I think 8/2 at the hands of Bayern Munich, a club from Germany.
He wanted out.
So he in August, before the end of the season, informed the club ownership that he's exercising that clause and they said no.
13:52
They said the deadline is at the end of the season in June.
And his argument was, well, the season didn't end in June.
The season ended in August because of COVID.
And they literally would not let him leave.
And the way they wouldn't let him leave was to put a $700 million price tag on him, because that's the other thing the club can do is Simply put a price on you that you have no say over.
14:17
And of course, there's no club in the world that can afford to pay $700 million for even messy.
So he was stuck there.
So a year later, he's like, OK, I've I've made peace with this.
So Barcelona is having some financial trouble and he is a high wage earner.
14:34
There's no question about that.
So his contract ended and they just booted him out and they were, he gave a famous press conference when he was at where he was in tears because he couldn't even he wanted to say goodbye to the fans.
He like this was the city where he again, since he was 15, he was living and they just decided to boot him up.
14:53
That's crazy.
Though that he was 14 years old.
I didn't realize these kids were going so early.
That's wild.
Oh.
It could be earlier than that, Jesus Christ.
So I want to talk a little bit about the main governing body of football, which most people know about, FIFA.
It's been criticized regularly for its corruption, its complicity and upholding racist and neo colonial dynamics in the sport.
15:16
Africa of course.
And going back to its history, it's gotten very unequal treatment by FIFA.
So tell us a little bit about this governing body and how it benefits from domination, how it plays out.
Money.
15:32
It's a way to make a ridiculous amount of money.
Football is such a commodity heavy sport where an enormous amount of money is to be made.
There's a reason why all these Gulf States and American capitalist investors own all these clubs all over Europe.
15:51
How did the World Cup end up in Qatar, which is not something you would normally expect?
Brown paper bags with a lot of money, allegedly.
I guess I have to add that word in there allegedly.
How is it going to end up in in Saudi Arabia?
How did it end up in the United States?
16:07
Each country bids on it, but with the bidding comes a lot of greasing the skids.
The other thing too is FIFA makes a ridiculous amount of money when they have good players for obvious reasons.
And so they encourage this sort of modern trafficking or trading of these players because they want to get the best players in the world in to their European leagues.
16:35
And the Premier League in England is the epitome of that, where I think over 64% of the players are foreign born.
So you're talking about a league of English clubs where the majority of the players are not English.
And it's not just FIFA.
FIFA has a number of subordinate bodies.
16:50
They divided by continents.
So there's something called UEFA that deals with Europe half or CAF that deals with Africa.
CONMA Ball is South America, CONCACAF is North America and Central America.
Asian Football Confederation is Asia.
The level of corruption, I think is best exemplified by a guy who's no longer the pet of FIFA but used to be named Sepp Blatter.
17:12
Sepp Blatter was a walking epitome of corruption to the point that the American Department of Justice opened up an investigation.
They didn't open it directly against him, but against all these executives around him.
That resulted in Swiss authorities arresting seven of those executives and all of them being found guilty of something or another.
17:36
Now, I not a favor of the FBI and the DOJ going after these officials, but it just again captures the level of corruption and also the level of politics.
Because part of the reason they're going after these officials is also not just for corruption, but because, for example, you want the World Cup in the US, well, give it to us, or else we might go after you for what we all know you do, a healthy.
18:00
Little bribe, yeah.
It's the carrot and the stick.
The bribe is the carrot and the stick is.
If you don't cooperate, we might do something bad to you.
FIFA, it's a very unloved organization by anyone who loves football, and I always.
Noticed like you were talking about the demographics, the 64% right in the Premier Leagues that are foreign born, there's so much colonial garbage that is conveyed in these games.
18:26
Always these players from Africa or Latin America are exoticized or painted as though they have this natural athleticism.
And then when they win, they're French, but if they lose, they're African.
So they're like these cheap boosts to national pride and identity, but then they're immediately slammed or their loyalty is questioned when they lose what you're.
18:49
Touching on here is where the colonialism bleeds over into the oppression and racism within these societies.
You said when they win their French, when they lose their African.
What you're referring to here are black French players, not foreign born players.
19:08
Famously, France in 1998 won the World Cup.
They won it with a team really heavily stacked with players from the former colonies of France, and it was a big boon for multicultural France.
Look, our team is so diverse, and when you look at it, just the picture of it, it does look very diverse.
19:27
There's no question about that.
Then the next World Cup came in 2002 and France did really bad.
Like they crashed out and then suddenly all these wonderful, beautiful French players, some of whom are the same players that played four years earlier, suddenly became foreigners again.
19:45
Africans, not French.
This is what happens when you start playing these Africans instead of good white French players.
We start to lose and we play so bad.
This happens all the time and does the.
Racist abuse play out against all dark skinned and black players including non foreign and foreign players in those clubs.
20:08
So I'll give you a concrete example, and it ties back to Clr James.
So Clr James makes the point in the book that to be a leading player in cricket, you have to not only be a great player, you have to be a great man.
You have to be better than all the white players, and you have to be just better as a person.
20:27
You have to have that sort of role model quality, whereas the white player doesn't have them.
So there's a case of Mario Balotelli.
Mario Balotelli, as you can maybe tell by his name, was Italian.
He was also black.
I would say Mario Balotelli was a great player.
20:46
Mario Balotelli was probably not a great man and that helped destroy his career.
He faced an intense and ridiculous amount of racism.
So I'm going to give you just a couple of examples.
He started in an Italian club called Inter Milan.
He would face abuse from fans of rival teams and a common chant.
21:06
Was this around 2009?
A black Italian does not exist.
This was another one was if you jump up and down, Balotelli dies.
I guess this has a rhythm or rhyme in in in Italian, but they would chant if you jump up and down Balotelli dies while making monkey noises.
21:26
When in 2013, he went back to Italy, he had he left Italy for a while and then played it elsewhere and then came back and was subject to monkey calls at him.
People were bringing inflatable bananas to stadiums.
21:43
One of the most notable incidents occurred in 2019 when he was playing in a club called Brescia against another club called LS Verona.
And in the second-half, he started hearing these monkey chants again from Verona supporters.
And he basically kicked the ball away into the stands and just started walking off the pitch.
22:00
Like I just fucking had it.
And he was eventually persuaded to come back and he did.
And then he scored later in the game and wrote on Instagram, shame on you in front of your children, your wives, parents, relatives, friends and acquaintances.
22:18
Shame on you.
To which a group of Verona fans replied that ballot telly quote can never be completely Italian.
It goes on and on so much.
Of what you're describing about the structure of recruitment with players being bought and sold and owned, I can't help but see a lot of analogies to slavery.
22:43
Would you?
Consider international football similar to the auction block.
Or is that analogy overstretched?
It isn't.
It isn't.
To use Sadio Mane as an example, he has achieved generational will.
He's actually rebuilt his entire village in Senegal.
23:00
He, Satio Mane, is certainly one of the wealthiest people in Senegal.
If, if he moves back there, your average slave isn't going to be living like that.
But we've been talking about the top leagues, the Premier League League or one in France, Syria and Italy.
23:20
Yeah, you will make good money when you play in those clubs.
Step into the lower leagues and it becomes a very different operation.
There's this quality of the auction block of being bought and sold between clubs like you're piece of meat, but you are really living very well.
23:37
And if I were to pick an analogy historically, it certainly wouldn't be anything like American or New World slavery or anything like that, because it isn't.
But I'm thinking of gladiators in ancient Rome, and I think you can say that for not just football players, but a lot of sports players in general.
23:55
Gladiators in ancient Rome were slaves, but even though they were slaves, in terms of their material existence, they probably lived better off and had better access to food and other amenities than most Roman citizens did.
Because they were entertainers.
24:10
They were loved.
Women would swoon over them.
There was a whole thing in ancient Rome where you would buy little vials of the sweat of gladiators because it's virile and it's sexy to have that sweat, and both men and women would buy it.
Most people think gladiator battles ended in death.
24:27
Actually, most of them didn't.
The only special ones did.
Most of them just win or lose.
They would find the areas where gladiators were housed, including the lavatories or the bathrooms where they do their business.
And you could tell by going through that what sort of diet they were on.
24:45
And it was rich in carbohydrates to build fat under the muscle, and they tended to live well.
But at the end of the day, they were slaves, unless you underestimate that fact that they were slaves.
It's worth noting that the most famous and most impactful slave uprising in ancient Rome, in a society that was entirely based on slave labor, was led by gladiators.
25:09
The Spartacus uprising, which left us to this day look to as a beacon of liberation.
So I would say that is the analogy that I would look to nothing like chattel slavery of the modern era.
But that's sort of, Yeah, that makes a lot of.
25:25
Sense and probably the amount of money that they do get also controls them completely how old can they actually get?
What is their life like after they reach a certain age and can no longer play the game physically?
25:41
Yeah, now.
I'm going to use that wonderful question you just asked Lola to get into the lower leagues.
Cool, because you do see a disparity there.
On average, the lifespan of a footballer in the top leagues ends at around 35 years old.
26:03
It actually tends to be worse when you head into the lower leagues.
For footballers in general, you start very young.
I'm going to use another example just to throw out numbers Egg.
There's a player named Trent Alexander Arnold.
He's not a foreign player.
He's from Liverpool.
He played for Liverpool and he just transferred to Real Madrid this summer.
26:23
He's 26 years old.
He's been playing in Liverpool for 20 years.
Wow, wait, how does?
That even make sense?
So he would go from first grade to the soccer field?
Yep, now.
What is most atypical about his case is that he made it and I will just read a little quote from him.
26:42
Here's the way he described it in an interview he did in 2024.
You have got more chance of winning the lottery than making it as a professional football.
If you are a young boy, 678, you get scouted early and by getting scouted early like you're just noticed playing in the street by a club and brought into the Academy of the club and that's all you're going to do.
27:08
What are you going to be able to do after the age of 3536?
Let's push it to 40.
What skills do you have other than football?
Now, if you're a Premier League player, you've made millions of dollars, possibly more, unless you've done stupid things like gambled it all away, which some did, by the way, Because remember, these guys come from poverty, a lot of them, and they don't know how to handle that much money.
27:36
And as soon as they start getting the money, you get all these unscrupulous types who will relieve them of it at the first chance.
You do have a number of examples of people who've played in the top league who have become homeless after retiring, and a lot of examples of people who simply lost most of their wealth.
27:54
You really have no other skills.
Now, maybe if you're a top league player like a Trent or a Messy, you could do a lot of ads, you could become a pundit.
But again, you're talking about the tiny elite.
So now we're going to get into the lower leagues.
If you play in the lower leagues, which is where most players play, your amount of money you make is nothing compared to what you make in the Premier League.
28:16
So I'm going to read you some statistics that I found in Lightning.
This is all focused on England .06% of all those who try to enter professional football in England actually enter professional football.
Oh, that's.
Incredibly small, less than point. 1%, that's crazy.
28:32
Zero, 6%, so less than. .1% yes.
Professional football does not mean the Premier League.
I want to emphasize that over and over again.
It could, but it also means the second tier of the Championship, the third tier League One, the 4th tier League 2.
28:51
It could also mean playing in the semi pro team, which includes both professionals and amateurs and increasingly is more professionals.
And those teams range from the 5th tier to the 9th tier of football and include dozens and dozens of club.
29:07
And of course, the further down you go to lower the pay goes.
Here's a further breakdown.
England 1.65 million try to enter football academies.
Less than 1% actually do enter a football Academy.
So that's 1650 enter a football Academy. 9% of that 1% will ever play at a professional level.
29:29
So now you're down to 149 people.
Wow.
And only 1.5% of Academy players will play in the Premier League.
So of that 1.65 million people who try to enter, 25 will actually ever play in the Premier League.
29:45
It doesn't mean they're going to succeed, it just means they're going to touch the Premier League and that's really.
Scary, considering how much you told us these families have to sacrifice and how much these people sacrifice in way of their education to even get that opportunity.
That's a huge number of people who are sacrificing a lot to ultimately fail.
30:01
Yes, and.
Again, I just want to emphasize we're not talking about foreign players here, we're talking about English players.
So wage ranges.
The Championship the second tier.
The average wage is between 10,000 and 30,000 lbs a week.
The highest wage in 2324 was 70,000.
30:20
Most poorer clubs pay less than £5000 a week.
League One it drops to 2500 to 3500 lbs a week.
League Two 1500 to 2500 lbs a week.
League 2 is the 4th tier, the National League the 5th to 9th tier.
30:38
You're talking about £1000 a week, and most players there earn less than 1000 lbs a week.
By contrast, the average wage in the Premier League is £60,000 a week.
And then you get, yeah, and then you get the standouts.
30:54
Someone like Erling Holland in Manchester City, who earns 525,000 lbs a week, Masala or De Bruyne, who earn £325,000 a week.
But if you're talking about most clubs, you're going to get 20 to 30,000 lbs a week.
31:09
Now that's significant money, but let's go back to the Championship League One, League 2.
When you talk about all the lower tiers, second tier, third tier, 4th tier, 5th all the way, 9th, 10th and there's beyond.
That's where most of the clubs are, that's where most of the players are.
31:27
You're a young man, you're going to make 1500 lbs a week.
It's not bad, it's £6000 a month, but your career ends at around 35 and that's it.
What do you do after that?
You got nothing.
You really have no skills in addition.
31:44
To not having skills I would assume they also have injuries the age of. 35 is the age for the Premier League as the average age of retirement.
But if you go to the lower leagues, that age drops.
And it's not because players want to stop playing sooner, it's because the level of injuries that they get and the lack of treatment.
32:03
Because they're considered more dispensable, because they bring in less money, Because the real money is the Premier League is such that they don't get the care they need, they don't get the medical attention they need, and their body breaks down much more quickly.
I did a search, examples of players who did well after retiring from football, especially from the lower leagues, and you get things like somebody became a Christian minister, somebody became a star or a find a career in World Wrestling Entertainment.
32:37
But a lot of them find.
Financial ruin?
Yeah, a lot.
Of them maybe can just get by if they're better with money and then you do get to financial ruin.
And these are going to be the people that no one's going to know about because these are not the stars.
These are not the messy's.
32:53
Most players are just kids who had a dream, followed that dream.
And these are the lucky ones because they got in, they can play.
Now imagine you're six years old, you're now 18.
You've been doing this since 6:00.
You're now 18 or 19 and you get told by every team you're not good enough, you're not going to play.
33:14
What are you going to do with your life?
So I wanted to pivot a little bit because I think one of the things that's so noticeable to me is how politicized football is, and yet how they always pretend like it's not.
This is a sport that was institutionalized during colonial times and whenever there's resistance or protest among players, that's where you see it the most, is this kind of master slave relationship.
33:43
And they always say keep politics out of the sports or whatever.
Most recently, we've seen so much of this about silencing leftist views, critical views to maintain the status quo and that.
Actually gets back again to the theme of Clr James's book, because one of his central points is there is no such thing as sport.
34:06
That's not political exactly.
It's a communal act.
It's a social act.
You don't do sports by yourself.
Even if it's an individual sport like tennis, you're watching it as a communal act.
And then certainly when you start talking about team sports like football or cricket or baseball or American football or any of those sports, it's a social act.
34:27
And as a social act, it carries all the social consequences of the society, from whether it's you must sing the national anthem before the game to all the baggage and the realities of colonialism.
Or in like American football, you may not kneel.
34:45
Yes.
Colin Kaepernick's career being destroyed basically because he decided, and justifiably so, to take a stand against the police killing of young black men.
But in terms of suppressing the views football players while claiming to keep politics out of football, which for weren't so tragic sometimes it would be a comedy, there's really no more outstanding example than the current genocide in gossip.
35:15
Footballers who have spoken out against it have faced everything from fines to having their contracts terminated to simply getting a talking to to shut them up, which often works, especially if you're a foreign player in Europe who's speaking, because that carries that consequence.
35:37
There's a Dutch player from obviously Arab background by his name, Anwar El Ghazi, who had his contract with the German club Mines 05 terminated in November 2023 because he shared a social media post.
35:52
He didn't even write it, he shared it.
That said, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
His contract was terminated.
Wow.
And it's not even something that he.
Said during a press conference or like on a microphone at a game.
It's something he said privately on his social media.
36:08
It's his public social media.
An Algerian international player who?
Plays for a French club called OGC Nice faced consequences for a social media post because they deemed a post that he did to be anti-Semitic.
He was suspended.
He was given A7 match ban.
36:24
He was found guilty by a court of inciting religious hatred and given an 8 month suspended prison sentence and a €45,000 fine.
A Moroccan right back who plays for the German club Bayern Munich faced scrutiny for his pro Palestinian post after October 23.
36:45
A member of Parliament was calling for his suspension from the club.
The club said they had a quote detailed and clarifying conversation with Mizrawi and they decided not to do anything.
That's an example of a talking to conversational waterboarding.
37:01
Right, the Scottish.
Club Celtic FC has been fined by UEFA because their fans, God bless them, keep coming to the stadium with massive amounts of Palestinian flags and chanting for Palestine during Champions League matches with clubs from other countries.
37:20
So this was directed at the club, not at an individual player.
But basically they were punishing the club because the fans were pro Palestine.
This guy named Mark Bonnick.
Mark Bonnick was for decades.
I forget exactly how many years, but decades was what's called the kit man for the team Arsenal in London.
37:39
The kit man is the guy who basically prepares all the clothes and the shoes and all that for players before the game gets them cleaned.
He was doing that job, no one ever complained of him.
People thought he was great.
He on social media expressed solidarity with the Palestinians and was subsequently fired from his job.
37:56
Now contrast that.
Has anyone ever been punished for being pro Ukrainian after the Russian invasion in 2022?
They weren't.
They always obligated.
To wear Ukrainian flags if you don't wear the flag, if anything.
You got it.
38:12
Yeah, it also.
Really.
Speaks to the level.
Of control that these clubs have over their players, yes.
The funny thing is that control doesn't just stop at politics, it actually goes into the game itself.
If you are a player and the referee makes a call that you don't like and you go on a rant, let's say in a press conference afterwards, you can be fined, you can be suspended for a certain number of games.
38:37
You can suffer consequences for simply saying that referee is incompetent or that referee made the wrong call.
There's a level of obedience.
That's expected here, yes, and it's not by.
Accident because historically I don't know that this is true today, but historically referees were cops or police officers.
38:56
Like literal police officers.
Yes, Oh funny, literal police.
This is in England so they would be cops during the day and.
Then on the weekend like ref some matches they would be cops during the day.
For a long time, refereeing was an amateur endeavour.
It was only professionalized I think in 2000 or 99 in England.
39:13
And a lot of these guys were former police officers, and not by accident.
Because if you're just simply talking about non foreign players, what gets a police officer off better than controlling the poor and the working class?
Now add to that foreign players, Oh my God, black players, and it's a cop's dream come true.
39:32
It went a delay.
Yeah.
A referee on the field is like a.
God, his word is final and it's not an accident.
I will say this that at least in England there are no black referees.
Is that actually true?
As of the 24. 25 season there are no black referees in the Premier League's top tier of referees.
39:53
So you might have some assistant referees who are black, but no top tier referee.
The guys who actually make the decisions on the field.
The last and only black referee to officiate in the Premier League retired in 2009.
That is crazy.
40:09
That's.
Slowing my mind.
OK, so this might seem like a side question and I don't know if you have the answer to this, but why are there so few black goalies?
I think it's a very interesting question because.
It cuts to the heart of the racism that's inherent in how the sport is organized.
40:25
One of the things you'll often hear, I'll come back to the goalie question in a SEC, but one of the things you will often hear is this white midfielder is very intelligent.
He chooses his.
They won't say white, but they'll point to a player who's white and they'll say this midfielder is very intelligent in how he chooses his passes, his timing and all this stuff.
40:47
But the black striker or the black player, he has really good instincts.
Wow, wow.
So there's a.
Racialized way that people's talents are understood, yes.
Now goalkeeping.
Is considered to be one that requires a lot of mental aptitude in the game because you are trying to determine before the player shoots where he's going to shoot and you're basically playing roulette and odds at all times to try to cover where you think the player is going to go.
41:23
It's a position in football that is perceived to require a lot of mental aptitude and so you're not going to get very many black goalies given the chance to apply that.
The other thing too is where there have been black goalies, like last season Manchester United had a goalie named Andre Onana, who is Cameroonian, and he did a terrible job there.
41:44
Absolutely terrible job.
There's no question about it.
And that gets magnified because when a white goalie does a terrible job, it's just this one white goalie is not great.
When a black goalie does a terrible job, you get back to the stereotype of why we don't have black goalies.
The other thing about the goalie position is you're in charge of the defense.
42:03
And so imagine for a minute a Black goalie screaming at the top of his lungs at his teammates, telling him, hey, you go there, you do this, you do that.
And basically being the boss of the defensive area, you get a sense, you put all these things together of why there are so few Black goalies.
42:21
There are a few, but very few Black goalies.
I think if you were to do an analogy for an American audience, it would be why there are so few Black quarterbacks.
So tell me.
Before we end a little bit about the infamous Hand of God goal by Maradona, I think every.
42:40
Football fan should know the hand of God almost by instinct.
This took place in 1986 in a game in the World Cup between Argentina and England.
Argentina's star player was Diego Maradona.
Diego Maradona, who died a few years ago, was really an interesting man.
43:00
He grew up in one of the poorest areas of Argentina in an area where there was no electricity, there was no running water.
He was one of those who got that generational wealth through his an amazing and ridiculous talent.
But he was also a leftist of sorts throughout his life.
43:18
So he had Che Guevara tattooed on his body.
He had Fidel Castro tattooed on his body when he died.
A lot of people who sympathize with leftist figures, we're really sorry.
So in 1986, there was this game.
43:34
And what you have to remember is this is just a couple of years or a few short years after the Falklands or Malvinas War.
And this was a war launched by Margaret Thatcher and Britain against Argentina over this small group of islands called the Falklands in English, Malvinas in in Spanish.
43:53
Again, we come back to Clr James.
It's politics on the field.
It is a replay of the war, except, except it's on a football pitch.
And there was in the second-half of the game and it was still 00.
A little kick over the head of the defender and Diego Maradona comes running and he jumps up.
44:14
And if you're watching it just as it's happening, you think he headed the ball in with his head.
But if you watch the replays, it's clear that what he did is he raised his arm as he was jumping and punched the ball to score.
44:35
Even I know that's against the rules.
Yeah, at the time there was.
No such thing as video reviews.
The decision of the referee was the decision, and so the referees, neither the assistants nor the main referee saw the hand.
They just saw a guy head the ball in and score a goal.
44:53
The English players, Needless to say, we're going ballistic because of course they saw the hands and anybody watching the game and watching the replays saw the hands.
Oh, so the camera can see?
It Oh yeah, this was captured on.
45:08
Camera everybody and you can watch it on YouTube and I would recommend it.
It's very definitely done.
But when you watch it, you can see the hand.
So in that post match press conference, he's pressed about this by journalists and he replies, this is obviously the English translation, that the goal was a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God.
45:33
Now having scored this patently illegal goal, Maradona then goes on to score what many consider to be the goal of the century.
And again, I would urge you to look at it basically slices open the English midfield and defense like hot knife through butter and scores one of the most amazing individual goals you'll ever see in your life.
45:56
It's proof that God was.
On his side, yeah.
And just one last thing about this goal.
Is it's so much lower behind it again because of the background of the war and the politics and all that stuff, and the fact that by winning that game, Argentina knocked England out of the World Cup and then went on to win the World Cup itself.
46:16
So it was seen as an act of rebellion.
Yeah, an act of revenge.
So much.
So that when Maradona visited Scotland in 2008, he was greeted as a hero in Scotland for knocking England out of the World Cup.
46:33
They were like, we loved it when you punched the ball that.
Was great, yeah, it was like a bond was.
Created between Scottish fans and the Argentine player.
People came there with pictures of him just at that spot where he was punching the ball and they wanted him to sign it.
Oh, that's And he did.
46:48
Yeah.
That's a beautiful underdog.
Celebration, baby, he was such a beloved.
Player because he was seen as a normal person in the sense that he didn't know how to handle his wealth.
He was a cocaine addict.
Once he retired, he died young.
47:06
He was, I think, 60 when he died.
He was seen as somebody that you could relate to.
And he was a leftist who would often speak about the conditions of the poor, the workers, the Palestinians.
Very interesting man.
Oh, you are you.
Are you Maradona?
47:21
But we don't love anybody who doesn't.
Love us.
Thanks for listening to Unwashed and.
Unruly straight talk from the unwashed masses that punches up.
47:39
Please catch up on all of our episodes and stay tuned for more.
Reach us at unwashedunruly@gmail.com.
