Search: ' discrimination'

Last night Iceland’s men beat England to reach the quarter-finals in their first-ever European Championship, yet their women’s team have nearly qualified for their fourth Euros without the same fanfare

28 June ~ When the Icelandic men’s team qualified for Euro 2016, articles were published around the world about it being an unprecedented milestone for a nation of only 330,000. However, this is not the first time Iceland have qualified for a European Championship. In fact, this is the fourth. The national women’s football team have played in the Euros three times – in 1995, 2009 and 2013 – and have almost qualified for Euro 2017. The men’s team are ranked 34th in the world, the women’s team are 20th.

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The row over Tottenham fans’ use of the word yids has started a wider debate about discriminatory terminology, argues Alan Fisher

David Cameron’s intervention in the long-running dispute over the use of the Y-word at Tottenham Hotspur took everyone by surprise. No doubt with a keen eye to the debate around free speech rather than a football audience, his interview with the Jewish Chronicle nevertheless struck a chord with many Spurs fans. “There’s a difference between Spurs fans self-describing themselves as ‘yids’ and someone calling someone a ‘yid’ as an insult. You have to be motivated by hate. Hate speech should be prosecuted – but only when it’s motivated by hate.”

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Right-wing politicians are trying to win votes by demanding the allegiance of non-Jewish players, Shaul Adar writes

With general elections expected next year, the Israeli political system is in turmoil. For members of the Knesset hoping to make their mark before the primaries, this is almost their last chance. Joining the attack on the democratic values of the state seems to be the best way to make an impression. In the last month there has been a deluge of law proposals designed to limit the freedom and integrity of the Supreme Court, press, human rights organisations and top non-Jewish footballers.

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Mark Segal explains a campain to allow fans to watch games with a pint, like in other sports

It is the age-old quandary for a football fan. Do we leave the pub now and get to the game before kick-off, or have another and miss the first five minutes? It happens every week and inevitably it is always the wrong decision. But what if there was a third option? What if you could get to the ground in good time, buy a beer and take it up to your seat in time for the start of the game?

That’s what happens in cricket and both codes of rugby, but if you tried at a football ground you would be breaking the law. A new campaign is trying to change this anomaly. At their most basic the arguments calling for the scrapping of the law, which was first enshrined in the 1985 Sporting Events Act, are hard to dispute. The campaign’s backers claim that it is finally time to remove the stigma of being a football fan and give them the same matchday experience as supporters of other sports.

The campaign was only launched in June but already has the backing of 40 of the 92 Premier League and Football League clubs and various other bodies including the Football Supporters’ Federation, who claim reversing the ban would stop the last-minute crush as hundreds of fans knock back their pint and rush up from the concourses for the start of a game.

Supporters say it will also stop binge drinking among fans and help increase revenues for clubs who are feeling the pinch during a prolonged economic downturn. So the first instinct of many who are faced with discriminatory law against football fans is to support this cause. But, even as someone who has experienced the worst excesses of “crowd control” down the years, this campaign leaves me feeling uneasy in the extreme.

The first thing to point out is that football crowds haven’t really changed that much since the Act was first introduced. The way they are forced to watch a game is certainly different and, in most cases, far more pleasurable. But in a crowd of 20,000 there is always going to be a not-insignificant number who don’t necessarily go looking for trouble, but will not back down if trouble finds them. 
We need to admit that not all football fans are like the ones to which the Sky cameras are 
always drawn.

Now add into this group constant access to alcohol during a 90-minute period where events are not always going to go their way and you are opening up a new point of 
potential conflict. Fighting between rival sets of fans may no longer take place inside grounds, but there are plenty of examples of fans of the same team wading into each other during matches.

There is also the constant movement in the stands as you have to shuffle up and down as someone slips to the bar every five minutes, and comes back again, and do you fancy being showered in beer when an important goal go in?

Comparisons with other sports are also fatuous. While it’s hard to claim a football crowd is any more passionate than those that watch rugby, they are certainly more volatile. And again adding more alcohol to the mix is not going to calm things down. While canvassing opinions I found support for a reversal of the ban to be about 50-50, so it’s interesting then that a recent report claimed that all the clubs who had voiced an opinion so far were right behind the campaign.

Could it be that clubs, already fleecing fans at the turnstile and in the club shop, are looking for more ways to make money without fully thinking through the consequences? Some argue that the law could at least be tweaked to end the ludicrous situation where corporate clients are forced to draw a curtain in their executive box to shield the pitch before they can open a bottle of beer. But then you can’t support a campaign based on ending discrimination, only to discriminate against those who can’t afford the best seats in the house.

At its heart there is something a little naive about the whole endeavour. In case it had escaped their attention, crowds don’t gather in large numbers every week to enjoy a huge communal session, they go to watch a football match. And even the most hardened of drinkers among them would admit they can wait 45 minutes between each pint.

From WSC 296 October 2011

The British press has widely turned on Andy Gray and Richard Keys for the sexist “banter” which now sees them out of their jobs at Sky Sports

Following the leak of videos that showed some archaic opinions being expressed in the Sky Sports studio, Richard Keys may have hoped that a generous sprinkling one of the most overused buzzwords of recent times would aid his acquittal. In a now notorious interview with Talk Sport, Keys claimed to have “enjoyed some banter together” with assistant referee Sian Massey, apologised for his “prehistoric banter” and, using attack as the best form of defence, pointed out that one of his most vocal critics Rio Ferdinand was guilty of similar “dressing room banter”.

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