August 20, 2025 • 48 mins
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.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
It's time for you and me to stand up for ourselves.
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 Beautifulgame, specifically how soccer or
international football maintainsand perpetuates racial
hierarchy, exploitation of players, and huge power profit
(00:30):
imbalances. 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. Historical hierarchies and
(00:51):
global inequalities continue to shape football today.
European power centers dominate the game, while the semi
colonial world serve as a sourceof talent, labor and spectacle.
Soccer has always been entangledwith empire, capitalism and
global control, with dark skinned players subject to abuse
and wealthy clubs extracting value from poor nations.
(01:14):
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
(01:34):
exploitative contracts, bought and sold literally without
adequate protection or even education.
And then meanwhile local football teams and systems in
the semi colonial world are underfunded and underdeveloped.
So let's break down a little bitof this recruitment structure,
these kind of neo colonial laborflows and commodification of
(01:54):
players because I think that's at the centerpiece here, right,
Ezra? 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. The second thing is I struggled
(02:19):
with how to focus this episode abit 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 neverget to play.
And the second thing is there's also the domestic market and
it's a highly class and raciallystratified game where the
(02:44):
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.
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 aboutfootball at all, but to talk
about cricket, a game that I'm not going to explain.
(03:07):
Fascinating to watch though. 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.
(03:27):
It is part memoir, art, sports book art, Marxist analysis, and
absolutely phenomenal. And in there he plays on this
line from Rudyard Kipling, whereKipling says what should they
know of England, who only England know.
And Clr James says what do they know of cricket who only cricket
(03:52):
know? And his point was to understand
cricket in this case, or sports more broadly.
You cannot divorce them from thesocial 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
(04:12):
even in the imperialist centers.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 thatTrinidad was a colony of Bryn.
(04:33):
The cricket field was a stage onwhich 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. And he goes on later to make the
point. Cricket had plunged me into
(04:53):
politics long before I was awareof 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 ofbeing West Indian and black and
playing a game dominated by the English, reinforced what he had
(05:14):
learned as simply being a young Trinidadian boy and reflected
the prejudices and the oppressions and the distinctions
in that society. So if we move on to football,
modern football, it's a game that's dominated by big money.
(05:34):
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. And in those situations, the
talent flows from the third world, from Africa, Latin
America into Europe. That's the elite.
(05:57):
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.
But the reality is you have untold numbers of young boys in
(06:19):
Brazil and Senegal, in Egypt andother countries that have
basically given up on anything in life other than playing
football. 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.
(06:43):
And many of those who end up in Europe will also never see a
professional football pitch. That is the sad reality.
So what you're saying is a youngplayer, 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
(07:04):
tryouts or training, or maybe he's not considered up to snuff
or a manager comes in and says you're not needed.
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
(07:26):
and his transfers and his future?
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
(07:48):
more privileged and that his family were within the
leadership of the village. 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.
(08:11):
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 sendthese kids to some of these
clubs. Of course, it's basically your
entire life savings. It's everything.
(08:33):
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. So in his case, he scrounged the
(08:53):
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 shiphim right back to Senegal.
And there's the shame of that, but also the fact that you're
(09:14):
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 withdeafness and skill.
It was revealed in his case, theclub actually paid for the
surgery that he needed and he recovered and became a star.
(09:39):
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. 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
(10:04):
from a small town, let's say in Nigeria or Cameroon or Columbia
or Senegal. You're identified by a local
agent as a talent. The family will often pay that
agent their life savings for thepromise of a trial in Europe,
usually Belgium, Portugal, Switzerland, sometimes France.
(10:24):
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. 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 youhave is a whole slew of young
(10:48):
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 itback.
That is wild. So what control or lack of
control do players have over their contract and transfers and
(11:12):
their future? OK, so you've made it.
You've made it into the big leagues.
Legally, you have the control ofyou cannot be transferred
without your approval. That is the legal term.
If you watch football they literally talk about buying and
(11:34):
selling players. 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
(11:58):
bought or sold, your ability to exercise the control is really
determined by how powerful and famous you are.
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
(12:20):
will be sold this summer becauseit's not up to him.
And if he doesn't agree to beingsold, 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.
What about someone like Messi? Well, Messi is a very
(12:42):
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. 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
(13:03):
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 ofhis decision by a certain date,
that date being June 10th, whichis 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
(13:27):
end until sometime in August. He did not like the direction
that Barcelona was heading in asa 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 clubownership that he's exercising
(13:49):
that clause and they said no. 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,
(14:09):
because that's the other thing the club can do is Simply put a
price on you that you have no say over.
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
(14:33):
high wage earner. 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. That's crazy.
(14:53):
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 offootball, which most people know
about, FIFA. It's been criticized regularly
for its corruption, its complicity and upholding racist
(15:14):
and neo colonial dynamics in thesport.
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 itplays out.
Money. It's a way to make a ridiculous
(15:35):
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.
How did the World Cup end up in Qatar, which is not something
(15:55):
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? 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
(16:18):
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.
And the Premier League in England is the epitome of that,
(16:38):
where I think over 64% of the players are foreign born.
So you're talking about a leagueof English clubs where the
majority of the players are not English.
And it's not just FIFA. FIFA has a number of subordinate
bodies. They divided by continents.
So there's something called UEFAthat deals with Europe half or
CAF that deals with Africa. CONMA Ball is South America,
(17:00):
CONCACAF is North America and Central America.
Asian Football Confederation is Asia.
The level of corruption, I thinkis best exemplified by a guy
who's no longer the pet of FIFA but used to be named Sepp
Blatter. Sepp Blatter was a walking
epitome of corruption to the point that the American
(17:20):
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.
Now, I not a favor of the FBI and the DOJ going after these
(17:40):
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.
Little bribe, yeah. It's the carrot and the stick.
(18:03):
The bribe is the carrot and the stick is.
If you don't cooperate, we mightdo 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
(18:24):
conveyed in these games. 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
(18:46):
loyalty is questioned when they lose what you're.
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 theWorld 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. There's no question about that.
(19:29):
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. Africans, not French.
This is what happens when you start playing these Africans
(19:50):
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. So I'll give you a concrete
example, and it ties back to ClrJames.
(20:12):
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.
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
(20:35):
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. Mario Balotelli was probably not
a great man and that helped destroy his career.
He faced an intense and ridiculous amount of racism.
(20:56):
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 ofrival teams and a common chant.
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
(21:17):
rhyme in in in Italian, but theywould chant if you jump up and
down Balotelli dies while makingmonkey noises.
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.
(21:38):
People were bringing inflatable bananas to stadiums.
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
(21:58):
away into the stands and just started walking off the pitch.
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. Shame on you.
(22:20):
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
(22:40):
see a lot of analogies to slavery.
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 entirevillage in Senegal.
(23:00):
He, Satio Mane, is certainly oneof 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 thetop leagues, the Premier League
League or one in France, Syria and Italy.
Yeah, you will make good money when you play in those clubs.
(23:23):
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.
And if I were to pick an analogyhistorically, it certainly
wouldn't be anything like American or New World slavery or
(23:44):
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. 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
(24:07):
citizens did. Because they were entertainers.
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. Actually, most of them didn't.
(24:29):
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.
And it was rich in carbohydratesto build fat under the muscle,
and they tended to live well. But at the end of the day, they
(24:52):
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. The Spartacus uprising, which
left us to this day look to as abeacon of liberation.
(25:16):
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.
Sense and probably the amount ofmoney that they do get also
controls them completely how oldcan they actually get?
What is their life like after they reach a certain age and can
(25:39):
no longer play the game physically?
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
(26:00):
ends at around 35 years old. 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 examplejust 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
(26:22):
this summer. 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. Here's the way he described it
(26:43):
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, youget 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
(27:07):
all you're going to do. 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
(27:27):
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.
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
(27:47):
homeless after retiring, and a lot of examples of people who
simply lost most of their wealth.
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
(28:08):
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. 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.
(28:29):
Incredibly small, less than point. 1%, that's crazy.
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
(28:49):
4th tier League 2. 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.
And of course, the further down you go to lower the pay goes.
(29:10):
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 everplay at a professional level.
So now you're down to 149 people.
(29:32):
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. 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
(29:53):
people sacrifice in way of theireducation to even get that
opportunity. That's a huge number of people
who are sacrificing a lot to ultimately fail.
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.
(30:16):
The highest wage in 2324 was 70,000.
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
(30:37):
tier. You're talking about £1000 a
week, and most players there earn less than 1000 lbs a week.
By contrast, the average wage inthe Premier League is £60,000 a
week. And then you get, yeah, and then
you get the standouts. Someone like Erling Holland in
Manchester City, who earns 525,000 lbs a week, Masala or De
(31:01):
Bruyne, who earn £325,000 a week.
But if you're talking about mostclubs, you're going to get 20 to
30,000 lbs a week. 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,
(31:21):
9th, 10th and there's beyond. That's where most of the clubs
are, that's where most of the players are.
You're a young man, you're goingto 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
(31:43):
addition. 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. Because they're considered more
(32:05):
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
(32:26):
leagues, and you get things likesomebody became a Christian
minister, somebody became a staror a find a career in World
Wrestling Entertainment. But a lot of them find.
Financial ruin? Yeah, a lot.
Of them maybe can just get by ifthey're better with money and
then you do get to financial ruin.
(32:47):
And these are going to be the people that no one's going to
know about because these are notthe stars.
These are not the messy's. 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
(33:08):
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. 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
(33:30):
institutionalized during colonial times and whenever
there's resistance or protest among players, that's where you
see it the most, is this kind ofmaster slave relationship.
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
(33:54):
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. 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
(34:14):
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.
And as a social act, it carries all the social consequences of
the society, from whether it's you must sing the national
(34:35):
anthem before the game to all the baggage and the realities of
colonialism. Or in like American football,
you may not kneel. Yes.
Colin Kaepernick's career being destroyed basically because he
decided, and justifiably so, to take a stand against the police
(34:55):
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. Footballers who have spoken out
(35:18):
against it have faced everythingfrom 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. There's a Dutch player from
(35:39):
obviously Arab background by hisname, Anwar El Ghazi, who had
his contract with the German club Mines 05 terminated in
November 2023 because he shared a social media post.
He didn't even write it, he shared it.
That said, from the river to thesea, Palestine will be free.
His contract was terminated. Wow.
(36:00):
And it's not even something thathe.
Said during a press conference or like on a microphone at a
game. It's something he said privately
on his social media. It's his public social media.
An Algerian international playerwho?
Plays for a French club called OGC Nice faced consequences for
a social media post because theydeemed a post that he did to be
anti-Semitic. He was suspended.
(36:22):
He was given A7 match ban. He was found guilty by a court
of inciting religious hatred andgiven 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
(36:42):
October 23. 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.
Right, the Scottish. Club Celtic FC has been fined by
(37:06):
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. 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.
(37:30):
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. The kit man is the guy who
basically prepares all the clothes and the shoes and all
that for players before the gamegets them cleaned.
He was doing that job, no one ever complained of him.
People thought he was great. He on social media expressed
(37:51):
solidarity with the Palestiniansand was subsequently fired from
his job. 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. Yeah, it also.
(38:12):
Really. Speaks to the level.
Of control that these clubs haveover 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
(38:35):
certain number of games. 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 refereeswere cops or police officers.
(38:56):
Like literal police officers. Yes, Oh funny, literal police.
This is in England so they wouldbe 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. And a lot of these guys were
former police officers, and not by accident.
(39:17):
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. It went a delay.
Yeah. A referee on the field is like
a. God, his word is final and it's
(39:38):
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. 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.
(40:00):
The last and only black referee to officiate in the Premier
League retired in 2009. That is crazy.
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
(40:21):
racism that's inherent in how the sport is organized.
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 isvery intelligent.
He chooses his. They won't say white, but
they'll point to a player who's white and they'll say this
(40:41):
midfielder is very intelligent in how he chooses his passes,
his timing and all this stuff. But the black striker or the
black player, he has really goodinstincts.
Wow, wow. So there's a.
Racialized way that people's talents are understood, yes.
Now goalkeeping. Is considered to be one that
(41:03):
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. It's a position in football that
(41:25):
is perceived to require a lot ofmental aptitude and so you're
not going to get very many blackgoalies 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. Absolutely terrible job.
There's no question about it. And that gets magnified because
(41:48):
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.
And so imagine for a minute a Black goalie screaming at the
(42:08):
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. 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
(42:29):
are so few Black quarterbacks. So tell me.
Before we end a little bit aboutthe infamous Hand of God goal by
Maradona, I think every. 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.
(42:52):
Argentina's star player was Diego Maradona.
Diego Maradona, who died a few years ago, was really an
interesting man. 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
(43:14):
talent. But he was also a leftist of
sorts throughout his life. 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.And what you have to remember is
(43:36):
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. Again, we come back to Clr
James. It's politics on the field.
(43:57):
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.
And if you're watching it just as it's happening, you think he
(44:20):
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. 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
(44:42):
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.
The English players, Needless tosay, we're going ballistic
because of course they saw the hands and anybody watching the
game and watching the replays saw the hands.
(45:04):
Oh, so the camera can see? It Oh yeah, this was captured
on. 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
(45:27):
goal was a little with the head of Maradona and a little with
the hand of God. Now having scored this patently
illegal goal, Maradona then goeson to score what many consider
to be the goal of the century. And again, I would urge you to
look at it basically slices openthe English midfield and defense
(45:51):
like hot knife through butter and scores one of the most
amazing individual goals you'll ever see in your life.
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
(46:12):
the World Cup and then went on to win the World Cup itself.
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. They were like, we loved it when
(46:34):
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.
Yeah. That's a beautiful underdog.
Celebration, baby, he was such abeloved.
Player because he was seen as a normal person in the sense that
(46:58):
he didn't know how to handle hiswealth.
He was a cocaine addict. Once he retired, he died young.
He was, I think, 60 when he died.
He was seen as somebody that youcould relate to.
And he was a leftist who would often speak about the conditions
of the poor, the workers, the Palestinians.
(47:18):
Very interesting man. Oh, you are you.
Are you Maradona? But we don't love anybody who
doesn't. Love us.
Thanks for listening to Unwashedand.
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.
It's time for you and me to stand up for ourselves.
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 Beautifulgame, specifically how soccer or
international football maintainsand perpetuates racial
hierarchy, exploitation of players, and huge power profit
(00:30):
imbalances. 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. Historical hierarchies and
(00:51):
global inequalities continue to shape football today.
European power centers dominate the game, while the semi
colonial world serve as a sourceof talent, labor and spectacle.
Soccer has always been entangledwith empire, capitalism and
global control, with dark skinned players subject to abuse
and wealthy clubs extracting value from poor nations.
(01:14):
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
(01:34):
exploitative contracts, bought and sold literally without
adequate protection or even education.
And then meanwhile local football teams and systems in
the semi colonial world are underfunded and underdeveloped.
So let's break down a little bitof this recruitment structure,
these kind of neo colonial laborflows and commodification of
(01:54):
players because I think that's at the centerpiece here, right,
Ezra? 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. The second thing is I struggled
(02:19):
with how to focus this episode abit 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 neverget to play.
And the second thing is there's also the domestic market and
it's a highly class and raciallystratified game where the
(02:44):
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.
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 aboutfootball at all, but to talk
about cricket, a game that I'm not going to explain.
(03:07):
Fascinating to watch though. 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.
(03:27):
It is part memoir, art, sports book art, Marxist analysis, and
absolutely phenomenal. And in there he plays on this
line from Rudyard Kipling, whereKipling says what should they
know of England, who only England know.
And Clr James says what do they know of cricket who only cricket
(03:52):
know? And his point was to understand
cricket in this case, or sports more broadly.
You cannot divorce them from thesocial 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
(04:12):
even in the imperialist centers.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 thatTrinidad was a colony of Bryn.
(04:33):
The cricket field was a stage onwhich 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. And he goes on later to make the
point. Cricket had plunged me into
(04:53):
politics long before I was awareof 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 ofbeing West Indian and black and
playing a game dominated by the English, reinforced what he had
(05:14):
learned as simply being a young Trinidadian boy and reflected
the prejudices and the oppressions and the distinctions
in that society. So if we move on to football,
modern football, it's a game that's dominated by big money.
(05:34):
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. And in those situations, the
talent flows from the third world, from Africa, Latin
America into Europe. That's the elite.
(05:57):
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.
But the reality is you have untold numbers of young boys in
(06:19):
Brazil and Senegal, in Egypt andother countries that have
basically given up on anything in life other than playing
football. 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.
(06:43):
And many of those who end up in Europe will also never see a
professional football pitch. That is the sad reality.
So what you're saying is a youngplayer, 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
(07:04):
tryouts or training, or maybe he's not considered up to snuff
or a manager comes in and says you're not needed.
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
(07:26):
and his transfers and his future?
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
(07:48):
more privileged and that his family were within the
leadership of the village. 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.
(08:11):
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 sendthese kids to some of these
clubs. Of course, it's basically your
entire life savings. It's everything.
(08:33):
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. So in his case, he scrounged the
(08:53):
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 shiphim right back to Senegal.
And there's the shame of that, but also the fact that you're
(09:14):
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 withdeafness and skill.
It was revealed in his case, theclub actually paid for the
surgery that he needed and he recovered and became a star.
(09:39):
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. 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
(10:04):
from a small town, let's say in Nigeria or Cameroon or Columbia
or Senegal. You're identified by a local
agent as a talent. The family will often pay that
agent their life savings for thepromise of a trial in Europe,
usually Belgium, Portugal, Switzerland, sometimes France.
(10:24):
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. 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 youhave is a whole slew of young
(10:48):
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 itback.
That is wild. So what control or lack of
control do players have over their contract and transfers and
(11:12):
their future? OK, so you've made it.
You've made it into the big leagues.
Legally, you have the control ofyou cannot be transferred
without your approval. That is the legal term.
If you watch football they literally talk about buying and
(11:34):
selling players. 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
(11:58):
bought or sold, your ability to exercise the control is really
determined by how powerful and famous you are.
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
(12:20):
will be sold this summer becauseit's not up to him.
And if he doesn't agree to beingsold, 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.
What about someone like Messi? Well, Messi is a very
(12:42):
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. 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
(13:03):
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 ofhis decision by a certain date,
that date being June 10th, whichis 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
(13:27):
end until sometime in August. He did not like the direction
that Barcelona was heading in asa 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 clubownership that he's exercising
(13:49):
that clause and they said no. 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,
(14:09):
because that's the other thing the club can do is Simply put a
price on you that you have no say over.
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
(14:33):
high wage earner. 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. That's crazy.
(14:53):
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 offootball, which most people know
about, FIFA. It's been criticized regularly
for its corruption, its complicity and upholding racist
(15:14):
and neo colonial dynamics in thesport.
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 itplays out.
Money. It's a way to make a ridiculous
(15:35):
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.
How did the World Cup end up in Qatar, which is not something
(15:55):
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? 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
(16:18):
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.
And the Premier League in England is the epitome of that,
(16:38):
where I think over 64% of the players are foreign born.
So you're talking about a leagueof English clubs where the
majority of the players are not English.
And it's not just FIFA. FIFA has a number of subordinate
bodies. They divided by continents.
So there's something called UEFAthat deals with Europe half or
CAF that deals with Africa. CONMA Ball is South America,
(17:00):
CONCACAF is North America and Central America.
Asian Football Confederation is Asia.
The level of corruption, I thinkis best exemplified by a guy
who's no longer the pet of FIFA but used to be named Sepp
Blatter. Sepp Blatter was a walking
epitome of corruption to the point that the American
(17:20):
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.
Now, I not a favor of the FBI and the DOJ going after these
(17:40):
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.
Little bribe, yeah. It's the carrot and the stick.
(18:03):
The bribe is the carrot and the stick is.
If you don't cooperate, we mightdo 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
(18:24):
conveyed in these games. 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
(18:46):
loyalty is questioned when they lose what you're.
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 theWorld 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. There's no question about that.
(19:29):
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. Africans, not French.
This is what happens when you start playing these Africans
(19:50):
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. So I'll give you a concrete
example, and it ties back to ClrJames.
(20:12):
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.
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
(20:35):
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. Mario Balotelli was probably not
a great man and that helped destroy his career.
He faced an intense and ridiculous amount of racism.
(20:56):
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 ofrival teams and a common chant.
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
(21:17):
rhyme in in in Italian, but theywould chant if you jump up and
down Balotelli dies while makingmonkey noises.
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.
(21:38):
People were bringing inflatable bananas to stadiums.
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
(21:58):
away into the stands and just started walking off the pitch.
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. Shame on you.
(22:20):
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
(22:40):
see a lot of analogies to slavery.
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 entirevillage in Senegal.
(23:00):
He, Satio Mane, is certainly oneof 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 thetop leagues, the Premier League
League or one in France, Syria and Italy.
Yeah, you will make good money when you play in those clubs.
(23:23):
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.
And if I were to pick an analogyhistorically, it certainly
wouldn't be anything like American or New World slavery or
(23:44):
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. 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
(24:07):
citizens did. Because they were entertainers.
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. Actually, most of them didn't.
(24:29):
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.
And it was rich in carbohydratesto build fat under the muscle,
and they tended to live well. But at the end of the day, they
(24:52):
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. The Spartacus uprising, which
left us to this day look to as abeacon of liberation.
(25:16):
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.
Sense and probably the amount ofmoney that they do get also
controls them completely how oldcan they actually get?
What is their life like after they reach a certain age and can
(25:39):
no longer play the game physically?
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
(26:00):
ends at around 35 years old. 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 examplejust 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
(26:22):
this summer. 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. Here's the way he described it
(26:43):
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, youget 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
(27:07):
all you're going to do. 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
(27:27):
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.
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
(27:47):
homeless after retiring, and a lot of examples of people who
simply lost most of their wealth.
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
(28:08):
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. 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.
(28:29):
Incredibly small, less than point. 1%, that's crazy.
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
(28:49):
4th tier League 2. 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.
And of course, the further down you go to lower the pay goes.
(29:10):
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 everplay at a professional level.
So now you're down to 149 people.
(29:32):
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. 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
(29:53):
people sacrifice in way of theireducation to even get that
opportunity. That's a huge number of people
who are sacrificing a lot to ultimately fail.
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.
(30:16):
The highest wage in 2324 was 70,000.
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
(30:37):
tier. You're talking about £1000 a
week, and most players there earn less than 1000 lbs a week.
By contrast, the average wage inthe Premier League is £60,000 a
week. And then you get, yeah, and then
you get the standouts. Someone like Erling Holland in
Manchester City, who earns 525,000 lbs a week, Masala or De
(31:01):
Bruyne, who earn £325,000 a week.
But if you're talking about mostclubs, you're going to get 20 to
30,000 lbs a week. 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,
(31:21):
9th, 10th and there's beyond. That's where most of the clubs
are, that's where most of the players are.
You're a young man, you're goingto 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
(31:43):
addition. 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. Because they're considered more
(32:05):
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
(32:26):
leagues, and you get things likesomebody became a Christian
minister, somebody became a staror a find a career in World
Wrestling Entertainment. But a lot of them find.
Financial ruin? Yeah, a lot.
Of them maybe can just get by ifthey're better with money and
then you do get to financial ruin.
(32:47):
And these are going to be the people that no one's going to
know about because these are notthe stars.
These are not the messy's. 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
(33:08):
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. 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
(33:30):
institutionalized during colonial times and whenever
there's resistance or protest among players, that's where you
see it the most, is this kind ofmaster slave relationship.
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
(33:54):
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. 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
(34:14):
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.
And as a social act, it carries all the social consequences of
the society, from whether it's you must sing the national
(34:35):
anthem before the game to all the baggage and the realities of
colonialism. Or in like American football,
you may not kneel. Yes.
Colin Kaepernick's career being destroyed basically because he
decided, and justifiably so, to take a stand against the police
(34:55):
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. Footballers who have spoken out
(35:18):
against it have faced everythingfrom 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. There's a Dutch player from
(35:39):
obviously Arab background by hisname, Anwar El Ghazi, who had
his contract with the German club Mines 05 terminated in
November 2023 because he shared a social media post.
He didn't even write it, he shared it.
That said, from the river to thesea, Palestine will be free.
His contract was terminated. Wow.
(36:00):
And it's not even something thathe.
Said during a press conference or like on a microphone at a
game. It's something he said privately
on his social media. It's his public social media.
An Algerian international playerwho?
Plays for a French club called OGC Nice faced consequences for
a social media post because theydeemed a post that he did to be
anti-Semitic. He was suspended.
(36:22):
He was given A7 match ban. He was found guilty by a court
of inciting religious hatred andgiven 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
(36:42):
October 23. 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.
Right, the Scottish. Club Celtic FC has been fined by
(37:06):
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. 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.
(37:30):
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. The kit man is the guy who
basically prepares all the clothes and the shoes and all
that for players before the gamegets them cleaned.
He was doing that job, no one ever complained of him.
People thought he was great. He on social media expressed
(37:51):
solidarity with the Palestiniansand was subsequently fired from
his job. 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. Yeah, it also.
(38:12):
Really. Speaks to the level.
Of control that these clubs haveover 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
(38:35):
certain number of games. 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 refereeswere cops or police officers.
(38:56):
Like literal police officers. Yes, Oh funny, literal police.
This is in England so they wouldbe 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. And a lot of these guys were
former police officers, and not by accident.
(39:17):
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. It went a delay.
Yeah. A referee on the field is like
a. God, his word is final and it's
(39:38):
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. 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.
(40:00):
The last and only black referee to officiate in the Premier
League retired in 2009. That is crazy.
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
(40:21):
racism that's inherent in how the sport is organized.
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 isvery intelligent.
He chooses his. They won't say white, but
they'll point to a player who's white and they'll say this
(40:41):
midfielder is very intelligent in how he chooses his passes,
his timing and all this stuff. But the black striker or the
black player, he has really goodinstincts.
Wow, wow. So there's a.
Racialized way that people's talents are understood, yes.
Now goalkeeping. Is considered to be one that
(41:03):
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. It's a position in football that
(41:25):
is perceived to require a lot ofmental aptitude and so you're
not going to get very many blackgoalies 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. Absolutely terrible job.
There's no question about it. And that gets magnified because
(41:48):
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.
And so imagine for a minute a Black goalie screaming at the
(42:08):
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. 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
(42:29):
are so few Black quarterbacks. So tell me.
Before we end a little bit aboutthe infamous Hand of God goal by
Maradona, I think every. 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.
(42:52):
Argentina's star player was Diego Maradona.
Diego Maradona, who died a few years ago, was really an
interesting man. 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
(43:14):
talent. But he was also a leftist of
sorts throughout his life. 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.And what you have to remember is
(43:36):
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. Again, we come back to Clr
James. It's politics on the field.
(43:57):
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.
And if you're watching it just as it's happening, you think he
(44:20):
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. 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
(44:42):
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.
The English players, Needless tosay, we're going ballistic
because of course they saw the hands and anybody watching the
game and watching the replays saw the hands.
(45:04):
Oh, so the camera can see? It Oh yeah, this was captured
on. 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
(45:27):
goal was a little with the head of Maradona and a little with
the hand of God. Now having scored this patently
illegal goal, Maradona then goeson to score what many consider
to be the goal of the century. And again, I would urge you to
look at it basically slices openthe English midfield and defense
(45:51):
like hot knife through butter and scores one of the most
amazing individual goals you'll ever see in your life.
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
(46:12):
the World Cup and then went on to win the World Cup itself.
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. They were like, we loved it when
(46:34):
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.
Yeah. That's a beautiful underdog.
Celebration, baby, he was such abeloved.
Player because he was seen as a normal person in the sense that
(46:58):
he didn't know how to handle hiswealth.
He was a cocaine addict. Once he retired, he died young.
He was, I think, 60 when he died.
He was seen as somebody that youcould relate to.
And he was a leftist who would often speak about the conditions
of the poor, the workers, the Palestinians.
(47:18):
Very interesting man. Oh, you are you.
Are you Maradona? But we don't love anybody who
doesn't. Love us.
Thanks for listening to Unwashedand.
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.
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Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com