A chara, - The havoc wreaked by English football supporters at the recent European Football Championships was as disturbing as it was unsurprising. In its aftermath, we have witnessed extensive soul-searching in the British media in an effort to find the causes of such behaviour. Many commentators have offered explanations for the disturbances: but the pat explanation that these people constitute a small minority of supporters is clearly false and was admitted as such by Jack Straw in the House of Commons.
More pertinently perhaps, members of the media have pointed to the general culture of British football. The missing link here is the role the media play in supporting and reproducing this culture. When racism and misogyny are prevalent in football reporting, we cannot be too shocked to see these attitudes find their way onto the terraces. The treatment of foreign footballers in the British press is a case in point.
I'm sure most supporters are familiar with the stereotypes surrounding foreign footballers - talented, yes, but also sly, mercenary, disloyal, feminine, work-shy and soft. I conducted extensive research on media reporting of foreign footballers in England during the 1998/99 season, looking at both tabloid and broadsheet coverage. What my research showed was that talk about foreign footballers in the British press was disturbingly similar to racist talk about immigrants.
It concentrated on three main themes: foreign footballers as a threat to the economic order (they take our jobs, take our money); as a threat to the social order (they cheat, they are deviant, commit crimes/fouls); and as a cultural threat (articulated as the invasion of an indigenous culture by a foreign culture). Generally, representations of foreign footballers were constructed in opposition to highly stereotypical representations of British footballers - hard-working, loyal, honest. When Ivor Callelly expressed similar sentiments about immigrants coming to Ireland, he was rightly criticised. If he had written the same things on the back of an English paper, it would not have raised an eyebrow.
In view of this, while media condemnation of football hooliganism is laudable, we must bear in mind that sports reporting does not exist in a vacuum. Thus, racist attitudes and sentiments expressed on the sports pages cannot and must not be seen as distinct from those expressed by football "hooligans". - Is mise,
Emmet O Briain, Department of Sociology, Trinity College, Dublin.