Posted by Awate on 21 Oct 2013 /
1 Comment
By @Awate91
Today starts a new feature on The Multicultural Politic where our video blogger Awate speaks some knowledge on the issues of the day. This week’s it is about Football, the beautiful game and how middle-class xenophobes are trying to change it up for themselves.
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1 Comment
Really like this video. Yes, it is racism, a spectacularly casual racism that seems to slip under the radar. And the connection with the nasty side of LADculture is an important one to make. The only thing I would raise is that the conclusion, “make better players”, is problematic. Youth football, worldwide, is an increasingly officious sector which produces a tiny minority of remunerated footballers out of the unpaid labour of children. I know this sounds hyperbolic, but I have seen the way it works at several levels. The fun and the freedom of football is systematically sucked out of it. Children are increasingly professionalised in every way except payment. They are encouraged to dedicate themselves to what is surely the world’s most over-subscribed labour market to the detriment of their developing social lives, their education, their psychological wellbeing and even their simple enjoyment of what should be recognised as a game. Thus far in the UK all attempts to make youth development more efficient have merely gone further down this route of tunnel-visioned rationality, stricter structures at ever younger ages. And, lest we forget, in some places this has mutated to the point of people trafficking. My conclusion would be, the English (and many others) need to stop obsessing over sporting efficiency to the point where it justifies the unacceptable – be it racism or the exploitation of kids.