As a lifelong Liverpool fan, I am conflicted with pride and shame at the moment. Pride in the increasingly convincing return of King Kenny. Shame at the unseemly mess our new hero, Uruguayan Luis Suarez, has plunged us in.
I know, for most football managers, players, fans and supporters, loyalty to the Club is paramount. What is an English football club without steadfast loyalty? Criticism is fine whispered internally but public derision just isn’t football…or at least it certainly is not the Anfield way.
For a one-time Kemlyn Road regular, proud to be a black face watching John Barnes weave his magic and become adored by the harshest of football critics, The Kop, there are definite pangs of shame.
So proud and fearless was I in fact that I still chuckle at the memory of having to scuttle off early before the end of 90 minutes to avoid the less friendly elements of our own support on a rare rough day.
Back then we were kings of all we surveyed. Yet, more than once my ebony skin led to a confrontation, only for a friendly Liverpudlian to chastise my misguided aggressor with the kindest of retorts – “Forget it, you idiot, he’s one of us”. That simple retort has carried me for as long as I can remember.
I only have to think of the feeling and I know, I am one of them and am immediately comforted.
You see, sport and football in particular, has such wonderful healing power, such unnerving ability to transcend differences that matters of race, creed and colour…class or circumstance, can easily be forgotten.
In truth, no one in professional, or for that matter semi-professional, association football really cares about anything other than the progress of a 430g air-filled sphere with a circumference of 70cm.
Everyone knows that everything rests on winning and losing. But even in this truth is a contorted reality, that most people of colour know only too well. For within its core, in the essential goal – to win or to lose – is a powerful twisting agent.
I mean, in a professional English sport where 25 percent of the players are black, could there really be racial issues when 98 percent of the management is white. It’s football after all, the only thing that matters is winning right!
Well, actually, wrong. Just three percent of the UK population is classified as Black. The astounding success of football players is one of the best examples of change there is. A quarter of all players is an amazing accomplishment given a management class that remains stubbornly white.
In less than four decades, the multi-racial face of the game has changed. Yet, the underlying reality is that people of colour in the English game are often forced to pretend. Forced to be a team player and in so doing distort their natural instincts, stunt their growth and play for and to the largely white crowd.
Even amid the success of black players there is an equally unflattering statistic, that the six percent of Asian population is almost without any representation in the professional UK football ranks. How is it possible for our Asian brothers to be so unskilled at football? Or could racism be at play here, in some small way?
YES. It hurts doesn’t it. When the game we love, is so clearly flawed. Perhaps, what hurts more is the truth that change is not actually on the horizon. That things, aren’t really getting better. That Luis Suarez and…dare I say it…England captain John Terry…can utter vicious taunts…is, well, part of sport.
And, we all know it is. If you can put a great player off his game just a little, what’s the harm?
The fact that the repeated slurs and forced changes in position and style of play and lack of opportunities, serves to twist the ideal of sportsmanship and pure beauty of the game we love is all fair in winning and losing. Isn’t it?
But what does it do to the character of the people of colour we have in sport today. My biggest concern and the driving force behind Sport in Black and White, a forum for change, is that the personality of many of our most alluring images is warped.
I believe racism in football has helped shatter the endearing character of many of our wealthiest and most notable figures. I am sorry to say, as someone that has mixed with black managers and players all my life that character, is sadly lacking in the majority.
The years of contorted striving to survive in a profession governed through a blindingly white prism has twisted egos and inflated personalities on both sides of the lens, as our bright and beautiful young men and women hide their lack of exposure and flaws.
The flashy bravado and bold unwittingly dense public pronouncements of black football professionals has left a huge void. Few have been able to cope with the demands of a sport that changes them beyond recognition. Fewer still have successfully been able to negotiate the minefield that is upper echelon football politricks.
I don’t want to blame racism in the game for everything but I do want to blame it for a lot. Most importantly, churning out, characterless individuals unable to organise themselves into a powerful lobby for change.
Just look over the pond at the US and see what has happened in sports, such as basketball and American football. The power of black athletes is supreme for one reason and one reason only. Education. While I abhor the enforced system of semi-professional skulduggery often called college sports, I believe it has had a powerful positive effect on producing intelligent well rounded characters. Characters able to decide their own fate.
If you watched as I did, when LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh manipulated proceedings a season or so ago, to take effective control of their own destinies, it was a telling moment. There stood businessmen, not athletes but players deciding amongst themselves what was in their own best interests.
How I wish for even small evidence of this in Europe or the UK. Players of colour, organised in their own interests.
You see, while we talk sport, we often forget that at the professional level it is a business and our black UK youngsters are ill-equipped to cope with the demands. Not just because of societal failings but because the sport we love has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. To read the full article click here.
THIS WEEK’S ARTICLES:
ROGAN TAYLOR: THE CUP THAT DOESN’T CHEER
KEIR RADNEDGE: SORRY SEEMS TO BE THE HARDEST WORD
GERRY COX: FOOTBALL AND GAMBLING – A MUG’S GAME
Delroy Alexander is the Chairman of the Sacred Sports Foundation, a not for profit charity based in Saint Lucia. He is a seasoned sports administrator and is a former Chicago Tribune senior investigative business reporter and a Pulitzer Prize nominee journalist. Founded by his brother, former Lincoln City and Macclesfield Town manager Keith Alexander, the Sacred Sports Foundation uses sport to work with disadvantaged Caribbean youth. The Foundation has partnered with the St. Lucia Football Association, and secured important grants from the EU, UNESCO and the Australian Government among others.
www.sacredsportsinc.com
chairman@sacredsportsinc.com
The views of our regular columnists are independent, and as such do not represent those of Leaders in Football.
