Football is seldom ever just about sports, and that’s especially the case in this tournament
When three Black players missed their penalties in the shootout that decided the last European football championship in 2021, they suffered screeds of racist abuse on social media. (Photo: Bloomberg)
When the two teams meet on Sunday in the final of the 2024 European Football Championship, Spain’s star players will be two young men of color — Nico Williams of Athletic Bilbao and Barcelona’s 16-year-old Lamine Yamal, both second generation immigrants. That’s testimony to a kind of progress of sorts — the Spanish team that lined up against England in November 2004 was all White — but it’s a fragile and qualified kind of progress at best as their opponents know all too well.
The UK’s immigrant communities arrived a generation or more before those in Spain, which offered little attraction for migrants until the economic boom of the 1990s. There are roughly 300,000 people in Spain with Sub-Saharan African origins while there are 2.4 million people from Black ethnic groups in England, the 2021 census said. And the England team has regularly featured Black players since the 1980s.
Football is seldom ever just about sports, and that’s especially the case in this tournament.
In a year of elections — five in Europe and one for the European Parliament itself — migration and identity have been central, divisive issues. They have loomed large over the 51 games, from Black French players including Kylian Mbappé taking a rare stand by calling on voters to keep extremists from power to members of Germany’s far-right AfD party characterizing their national team as too “woke,” too diverse and not German enough.
When three Black players missed their penalties in the shootout that decided the last European football championship in 2021, they suffered screeds of racist abuse on social media. Ian Wright, ex-Arsenal footballer and father of Wright-Philips, wrote in June that Black players are scapegoated after the sports sections of newspapers plastered images of England star Bukayo Saka after the national team lost a friendly match. Saka was only on the pitch for 25 minutes.
“Now more than ever let’s get behind & support these young people,” Wright said on X.
