Damning article on racist media re African players

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Re: Damning article on racist media re African players

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YUJAM wrote:Damning. Pace and power eh? Their football racist nstincts come out

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sbnati ... -world-cup
Spot on Yujam. I made some comments about Billic on another thread.

Must say, I agree entirely with that article. Two big powerful, pacy teams played against each other. The Senegalese won because amongst the many attributes they displayed, included, intelligence, correct tactics, sound organisation and better game management. They did not win because if the stereotypes being attributed to them.
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Re: Damning article on racist media re African players

Post by Waffiman »

Benedict Iroha wrote:
Waffiman wrote:
Enugu II wrote:
sayala wrote:Thats a bogus / useless article. There is nothing racist about saying Senegal have pace and power. African should not be claiming racism at everything.

Also it is true that African teams are tactically and technically inept. It does not mean Africans are less intelligent. And you cannot argue with the results.
It is racist when a defined racial group of people are stereotyped with particular trait. That is exactly what this is. If you cannot see that as racist characterization then perhaps are you agreeing with the commentators that certain races have solely those traits? The point is that all persons, regardless of race, are in fact imbued with similar characteristics as humans.
Spot on.

This reminds of Alan Sugar's tweet yesterday, and those White people who asked why it was racist.

Sugar, said the Senegalese team looked like poor migrant Africans who hawk good in Marbella beaches. I responded, by asking if he saw all the Black contestants in his Apprentice show as the Africans he has seen on Marbella beach.

People just don't seem to understand the mentality behind such comments.
That was an unnecessary comment. All these oyibos feel they are just free to talk anyhow since Trump has been president.
I agree.

Trump has indeed emboldened racists.
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Re: Damning article on racist media re African players

Post by sayala »

Waffiman wrote:
Enugu II wrote:
sayala wrote:Thats a bogus / useless article. There is nothing racist about saying Senegal have pace and power. African should not be claiming racism at everything.

Also it is true that African teams are tactically and technically inept. It does not mean Africans are less intelligent. And you cannot argue with the results.
It is racist when a defined racial group of people are stereotyped with particular trait. That is exactly what this is. If you cannot see that as racist characterization then perhaps are you agreeing with the commentators that certain races have solely those traits? The point is that all persons, regardless of race, are in fact imbued with similar characteristics as humans.
Spot on.

This reminds of Alan Sugar's tweet yesterday, and those White people who asked why it was racist.

Sugar, said the Senegalese team looked like poor migrants Africans who hawk in Marbella beaches. I responded, by asking if he saw all the Black contestants in his Apprentice show as the Africans he has seen on Marbella beach?

People just don't seem to understand the mentality behind such comments.
Comparing Alan Sugar's statement to what the media does and saying both are racist is comical IMO. If I was on a team and the media referred to my team as pacy and powerful, I would take it as a complement.

However if African teams are offended by being called Pacy and powerful then the onus is us Africans to prove the western media wrong.
If we keep faltering and if every African team is eliminated early then maybe they are right. This is best way to disprove a stereotype. BEAT THE EUROPEANS AND PROVE THEM WRONG. Or else that so called stereotype will stick.
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Re: Damning article on racist media re African players

Post by sayala »

I was listening to the commentary about the Morocco - Portugal match. All the commentators were saying Morocco outplayed Portugal but lack quality in the final 3rd. This has been my point since this thread started. We lack accurate passers, playmakers, accurate crossers, finishers, we lack poise, lack situational awareness and so forth. It all comes down to player development.
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Re: Damning article on racist media re African players

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Dr. Wazobia wrote:
cic old boy wrote:
Enugu II wrote:
YUJAM,

But several CE guys regurgitate media cliche and use those to describe Nigeria and African teams plus the players. They somehow believe that they sound knowledgeable with the use of the well-worn cliches. Fortunately, the use of "naivety" to describe African teams have gradually worn its time on CE. It was a term that annoyed me to great lengths.
Enugu, the powers of brainwashing can be seen in how many people regurgitate what they hear in the media and think they are actually spouting their own ideas. I see that here a lot and when I talk to some of my EPL addicted friends.
That ‘media cliche’ is getting worse (especially on ITV). It is slightly unnerving to think that Roy Keane and Bilic are ‘football people’ with the nonsense they are spouted this week. The icing on the cake was the racist tweet by Lord Sugar last night about the Senegal Team and Marbella. That took it to the next level.
That would be the same Alan Sugar that was slating Jeremy Corbyn for not taking action on Labour antisemitism. Image
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Re: Damning article on racist media re African players

Post by Enugu II »

sayala wrote:I was listening to the commentary about the Morocco - Portugal match. All the commentators were saying Morocco outplayed Portugal but lack quality in the final 3rd. This has been my point since this thread started. We lack accurate passers, playmakers, accurate crossers, finishers, we lack poise, lack situational awareness and so forth. It all comes down to player development.
Bros
As a commentator your choice is to provide reasons to listeners for what is happening. The issue is what the commentators choose as reasons. The Germans dominated second half against Mexico but do you think it would be attributed to lack of quality on part of Germany? It is a choice. In the Morocco game commentators could have explained tusing other descriptors. That is the point. There is nothing that makes the commentators beyond reproach. Everyone can frame a story with particular narratives even when watching the same thing. A frame is a choice.
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Re: Damning article on racist media re African players

Post by F360 »

sayala wrote:
F360 wrote:
I get your overall points and agree with what you wrote but I have to ask about the last paragraph.
You're basically using "Population theory" to argue about success in Football/Soccer. That's never a good argument. You rebuffed the mention of India and China to an extent. What about the USA? They have a long term plan to develop players suited to modern football. They've been doing it for years now and they are coming along but the USA would have lost to Uruguay 10 years ago, 5 years ago and today. They will probably still lose to Uruguay in 2026 imo. Population shouldn't matter as opposed to having the football infrastructure- decent league to develop, pitches and coaching.
That can be found in a country with 3 million or a country with 150 million if they do the right things.....BUT We know doing the right thing and Nigeria don't go hand in hand.
USA is doing a lousy job. First off parents have to pay for their kids to play. This often means spending about $3000 to $5000 just for the kid to play and travel. This fact alone eliminates many kids who cannot afford it. As Klinsmann pointed out, USA will not realize its full potential until the sport is accessible to kids on poor neighbourhoods especially blacks, hispanics and other immigrants. The people who excel at sports like football are typically from poor neighbourhoods because they are more driven. He said this is true even in Germany, France etc which is why their teams are full of immigrants.

And for those who can pay, the standards of coaching are not that great. The primary goal of many of these travel teams is to make money from the parents. On the other hand in Europe, the primary goal of the youth setup is to produce players for the senior team. Countries like Germany enforce standards that youth coaches must meet. Often they require a UEFA license.

Finally, the best athletes in the USA still gravitate towards American football, basketball, baseball, athletics and so forth. Whereas in Uruguay, the most capable athletes will play soccer, same in Egypt. That makes a huge difference.

Parents have to pay for their kids to play...on certain types of club teams.
Now with the advent of MLS academies, a number of quality young players don't have to do that. FC Dallas is an example as they have done well with an academy in reaching out to the tons of latino kids in the area and finding some good ones. Same with LA Galaxy.
Also for a lot of kids that can't afford it, if the player is good enough, a number of coaches of those pay to play youth teams will do whatever they can to keep the kid on the team. More needs to be done to subsidize those kids but with the growth of MLS academies, the pay to play model should fall to the side over the next decade.
Lol at the Klinsmann mention. The man who conned US Soccer into believing he would be a savior as a coach AND a technical director of the entire program including youth teams. What poor neighborhood did Hummels, Mueller and Neuer grow up in? Some of the Turkish-German immigrant players for sure, but the others werent growing up in German "Favelas". It varies country by country imo.
Finally, the narrative that "the best athletes in the USA still gravitate towards American football, basketball, baseball etc" is ridiculous and lazy. So we're just assuming that Soccer is all about athleticism or mainly about that? I mean Mueller and Modric's aren't exactly phenomenal athletes but they have some atheticism. That isn't what makes them great or makes their abilities stand out. It wouldn't necessarily translate to Basketball or Baseball(Hand-eye coordination specific). The USA have excellent athletes but that doesn't mean Soccer would have been the right sport for LeBron, Kobe, Trout, Harper, Julio Jones, etc.
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Re: Damning article on racist media re African players

Post by F360 »

sayala wrote:I was listening to the commentary about the Morocco - Portugal match. All the commentators were saying Morocco outplayed Portugal but lack quality in the final 3rd. This has been my point since this thread started. We lack accurate passers, playmakers, accurate crossers, finishers, we lack poise, lack situational awareness and so forth. It all comes down to player development.

Aren't those recent developments? Or you're saying that's been the case for the past decade or so.
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Re: Damning article on racist media re African players

Post by Shadams »

I wrote a similar article on this topic last years. Here, posted on Medium this week:

The Myth of the Physical African Team

I love listening to white men who run commentaries of games, always fascinated by the kind of discourses produced during major events such as the FIFA World Cup or the Olympics. My favorite statement is a signature line from most white analysts commenting on black players. You hear it when a black or African team is described by a supposed pundit or an opponent as a “very physical and quick side.” Even the liberal NBC began their report of Senegal’s opening match by writing that Poland struggled all game against the pace and physicality of Senegal

This idea is a single story consistently perpetuated and circulated from tournament to tournament. In the global arena of sports narratives, it is one that has been normalized because of the unchecked racist assumptions of otherwise well-informed sports pundits.

The ongoing games at Russia have shown again that the football pitch is an arena of the political. The language of othering embedded in the epithets employed in describing Black or African athletes is strikingly familiar in the framework of racial politics. From the perspective of fans, the host country is not as hostile as many had expected. Russia has been more racially tolerant than several on-air and online commentators whose language of reportage and review is replete with coded racial stereotypes.

The Word Cup in Putin’s country definitely presents us with another occasion to reflect on how a section of the western sporting media reproduces a fixed and fixable black/African identity in the discussion of African soccer teams.

To unpack the discursive violence of the “very physical” phrase, you would need to recall that a white team is always already a “tactically disciplined side” that supposedly relies more on reason, creativity, and logic. Not the raw energy and power of the black body.

Never mind that a white team is also said to be “physical” sometimes when partly constituted by a large black presence, as in the French soccer team to the Euros in June. Or think of the Icelandic team at Russia. Their physical presence against Argentina never became reason for a curious essentialization

The context in which “a physical African side” is mooted may be flattering. So I pretend not to note the tensions inherent in a language that perennially marks a black team as incapable of possessing any significant skills, or creativity.

Senegal may have outplayed Poland at the Spartak Stadium in their opening match in Russia, yet for several analysts of the game, it was a controversial win that came mostly on the heels of the pace and power of the Africans, never because they were consistently more tactical than the Polish team. As a matter of fact, in the estimation of many, a Senegalese victory was an upset — precisely because an underwhelming Polish team had been assumed already to be the superior side. The Senegalese players, meanwhile, were, as it is in the tradition of most pundits to, reduced to mere pace and power.

The obvious reality is that the football pitch is made to signify not as a mere site of competition but as an agora of power relations, with white commentators serving mostly as biased arbiters. The politics here is about the performance of knowledge and critical thinking versus the enactment of only physical strength, believed prejudicially by many white commentators to be a black’s team only advantage.

For instance, athletes from Kenya, Ethiopia, and other East African countries to the major track and field events would naturally be seen as unrivaled champions of long-distance events at major sports meets at the Olympics. This view would, however, not because they are expected to win because of any tactical discipline, which, ostensibly, is the white man’s major resource, but because of romanticized notion of physical endurance. it does not matter that as International Boxing enjoys a dominant black presence, so has Wrestling been mostly dominated by non-blacks.

There is a problem of stereotyping when the language used to describe these teams deemphasizes the skills and tactical awareness African teams also demonstrate. The persistent narrative of the strong and physical black team also recuperates a sexual labeling that reaches a ridiculous crescendo when the focus is on black female bodies in sports.

The reproduction of the black body as a space of a particular kind of knowledge that denies the black person’s capacity for thought and creativity is a fetish left unaddressed for so long. Ask a white sport (wo)man about an opponent they have never met and you are likely to get the same answer about physicality and pace if the opponent is black. It is a physical side. End of story. Nothing else matters.

The problem with this idea of physicality is that it is a mythology of racial dispossession the African or black athlete. It operates as a form of ideological speech, which many African soccer players may get used to hearing to the detriment of their own creativity. In a Barthesian sense, this common tirade is system of speech that enfleshes racial bias. African sports teams in Russia and in future sporting events are more than raw energy.

By not discerning the ideological universe of these sports narratives, we lose the ability to challenge and question the hegemony they consolidate and normalize. It is time to be alert to the representations of the African person in sports, whether it is soccer or track and field events. This alertness assures that we can deconstruct a static African sports identity produced and reproduced by insensitive white commentators.

While black players can be proud of their physicality, it is not all there is to them. There is no denying the fact that every sport requires a lot of energy and physical stamina. Both black/African athlete and their white counterparts exert much energy to win games. The English Premier League, to give a final example, is know to have commentators who describe black players, not for their technique, but their pace, physicality, and power. Hardly are similar descriptions used when extolling white players that are equalling strong. Think of players from Scandinavia.

To reduce only the black athlete to their physicality in media discourse is a reductionist gesture that denies their creativity and the aesthetic vision of black sportsmen and women. African and black sportsmen are more than their bodies. The coverage of black bodies and the discourses around them require an urgent rewriting.

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Re: Damning article on racist media re African players

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Notice nobody called us in any negative way.
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Re: Damning article on racist media re African players

Post by Cellular »

Shadams wrote:I wrote a similar article on this topic last years. Here, posted on Medium this week:

The Myth of the Physical African Team

I love listening to white men who run commentaries of games, always fascinated by the kind of discourses produced during major events such as the FIFA World Cup or the Olympics. My favorite statement is a signature line from most white analysts commenting on black players. You hear it when a black or African team is described by a supposed pundit or an opponent as a “very physical and quick side.” Even the liberal NBC began their report of Senegal’s opening match by writing that Poland struggled all game against the pace and physicality of Senegal

This idea is a single story consistently perpetuated and circulated from tournament to tournament. In the global arena of sports narratives, it is one that has been normalized because of the unchecked racist assumptions of otherwise well-informed sports pundits.

The ongoing games at Russia have shown again that the football pitch is an arena of the political. The language of othering embedded in the epithets employed in describing Black or African athletes is strikingly familiar in the framework of racial politics. From the perspective of fans, the host country is not as hostile as many had expected. Russia has been more racially tolerant than several on-air and online commentators whose language of reportage and review is replete with coded racial stereotypes.

The Word Cup in Putin’s country definitely presents us with another occasion to reflect on how a section of the western sporting media reproduces a fixed and fixable black/African identity in the discussion of African soccer teams.

To unpack the discursive violence of the “very physical” phrase, you would need to recall that a white team is always already a “tactically disciplined side” that supposedly relies more on reason, creativity, and logic. Not the raw energy and power of the black body.

Never mind that a white team is also said to be “physical” sometimes when partly constituted by a large black presence, as in the French soccer team to the Euros in June. Or think of the Icelandic team at Russia. Their physical presence against Argentina never became reason for a curious essentialization

The context in which “a physical African side” is mooted may be flattering. So I pretend not to note the tensions inherent in a language that perennially marks a black team as incapable of possessing any significant skills, or creativity.

Senegal may have outplayed Poland at the Spartak Stadium in their opening match in Russia, yet for several analysts of the game, it was a controversial win that came mostly on the heels of the pace and power of the Africans, never because they were consistently more tactical than the Polish team. As a matter of fact, in the estimation of many, a Senegalese victory was an upset — precisely because an underwhelming Polish team had been assumed already to be the superior side. The Senegalese players, meanwhile, were, as it is in the tradition of most pundits to, reduced to mere pace and power.

The obvious reality is that the football pitch is made to signify not as a mere site of competition but as an agora of power relations, with white commentators serving mostly as biased arbiters. The politics here is about the performance of knowledge and critical thinking versus the enactment of only physical strength, believed prejudicially by many white commentators to be a black’s team only advantage.

For instance, athletes from Kenya, Ethiopia, and other East African countries to the major track and field events would naturally be seen as unrivaled champions of long-distance events at major sports meets at the Olympics. This view would, however, not because they are expected to win because of any tactical discipline, which, ostensibly, is the white man’s major resource, but because of romanticized notion of physical endurance. it does not matter that as International Boxing enjoys a dominant black presence, so has Wrestling been mostly dominated by non-blacks.

There is a problem of stereotyping when the language used to describe these teams deemphasizes the skills and tactical awareness African teams also demonstrate. The persistent narrative of the strong and physical black team also recuperates a sexual labeling that reaches a ridiculous crescendo when the focus is on black female bodies in sports.

The reproduction of the black body as a space of a particular kind of knowledge that denies the black person’s capacity for thought and creativity is a fetish left unaddressed for so long. Ask a white sport (wo)man about an opponent they have never met and you are likely to get the same answer about physicality and pace if the opponent is black. It is a physical side. End of story. Nothing else matters.

The problem with this idea of physicality is that it is a mythology of racial dispossession the African or black athlete. It operates as a form of ideological speech, which many African soccer players may get used to hearing to the detriment of their own creativity. In a Barthesian sense, this common tirade is system of speech that enfleshes racial bias. African sports teams in Russia and in future sporting events are more than raw energy.

By not discerning the ideological universe of these sports narratives, we lose the ability to challenge and question the hegemony they consolidate and normalize. It is time to be alert to the representations of the African person in sports, whether it is soccer or track and field events. This alertness assures that we can deconstruct a static African sports identity produced and reproduced by insensitive white commentators.

While black players can be proud of their physicality, it is not all there is to them. There is no denying the fact that every sport requires a lot of energy and physical stamina. Both black/African athlete and their white counterparts exert much energy to win games. The English Premier League, to give a final example, is know to have commentators who describe black players, not for their technique, but their pace, physicality, and power. Hardly are similar descriptions used when extolling white players that are equalling strong. Think of players from Scandinavia.

To reduce only the black athlete to their physicality in media discourse is a reductionist gesture that denies their creativity and the aesthetic vision of black sportsmen and women. African and black sportsmen are more than their bodies. The coverage of black bodies and the discourses around them require an urgent rewriting.

https://medium.com/@yeku.james/the-myth ... 3323cb8f32
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Re: Damning article on racist media re African players

Post by Waffiman »

Shadams wrote:I wrote a similar article on this topic last years. Here, posted on Medium this week:

The Myth of the Physical African Team

I love listening to white men who run commentaries of games, always fascinated by the kind of discourses produced during major events such as the FIFA World Cup or the Olympics. My favorite statement is a signature line from most white analysts commenting on black players. You hear it when a black or African team is described by a supposed pundit or an opponent as a “very physical and quick side.” Even the liberal NBC began their report of Senegal’s opening match by writing that Poland struggled all game against the pace and physicality of Senegal

This idea is a single story consistently perpetuated and circulated from tournament to tournament. In the global arena of sports narratives, it is one that has been normalized because of the unchecked racist assumptions of otherwise well-informed sports pundits.

The ongoing games at Russia have shown again that the football pitch is an arena of the political. The language of othering embedded in the epithets employed in describing Black or African athletes is strikingly familiar in the framework of racial politics. From the perspective of fans, the host country is not as hostile as many had expected. Russia has been more racially tolerant than several on-air and online commentators whose language of reportage and review is replete with coded racial stereotypes.

The Word Cup in Putin’s country definitely presents us with another occasion to reflect on how a section of the western sporting media reproduces a fixed and fixable black/African identity in the discussion of African soccer teams.

To unpack the discursive violence of the “very physical” phrase, you would need to recall that a white team is always already a “tactically disciplined side” that supposedly relies more on reason, creativity, and logic. Not the raw energy and power of the black body.

Never mind that a white team is also said to be “physical” sometimes when partly constituted by a large black presence, as in the French soccer team to the Euros in June. Or think of the Icelandic team at Russia. Their physical presence against Argentina never became reason for a curious essentialization

The context in which “a physical African side” is mooted may be flattering. So I pretend not to note the tensions inherent in a language that perennially marks a black team as incapable of possessing any significant skills, or creativity.

Senegal may have outplayed Poland at the Spartak Stadium in their opening match in Russia, yet for several analysts of the game, it was a controversial win that came mostly on the heels of the pace and power of the Africans, never because they were consistently more tactical than the Polish team. As a matter of fact, in the estimation of many, a Senegalese victory was an upset — precisely because an underwhelming Polish team had been assumed already to be the superior side. The Senegalese players, meanwhile, were, as it is in the tradition of most pundits to, reduced to mere pace and power.

The obvious reality is that the football pitch is made to signify not as a mere site of competition but as an agora of power relations, with white commentators serving mostly as biased arbiters. The politics here is about the performance of knowledge and critical thinking versus the enactment of only physical strength, believed prejudicially by many white commentators to be a black’s team only advantage.

For instance, athletes from Kenya, Ethiopia, and other East African countries to the major track and field events would naturally be seen as unrivaled champions of long-distance events at major sports meets at the Olympics. This view would, however, not because they are expected to win because of any tactical discipline, which, ostensibly, is the white man’s major resource, but because of romanticized notion of physical endurance. it does not matter that as International Boxing enjoys a dominant black presence, so has Wrestling been mostly dominated by non-blacks.

There is a problem of stereotyping when the language used to describe these teams deemphasizes the skills and tactical awareness African teams also demonstrate. The persistent narrative of the strong and physical black team also recuperates a sexual labeling that reaches a ridiculous crescendo when the focus is on black female bodies in sports.

The reproduction of the black body as a space of a particular kind of knowledge that denies the black person’s capacity for thought and creativity is a fetish left unaddressed for so long. Ask a white sport (wo)man about an opponent they have never met and you are likely to get the same answer about physicality and pace if the opponent is black. It is a physical side. End of story. Nothing else matters.

The problem with this idea of physicality is that it is a mythology of racial dispossession the African or black athlete. It operates as a form of ideological speech, which many African soccer players may get used to hearing to the detriment of their own creativity. In a Barthesian sense, this common tirade is system of speech that enfleshes racial bias. African sports teams in Russia and in future sporting events are more than raw energy.

By not discerning the ideological universe of these sports narratives, we lose the ability to challenge and question the hegemony they consolidate and normalize. It is time to be alert to the representations of the African person in sports, whether it is soccer or track and field events. This alertness assures that we can deconstruct a static African sports identity produced and reproduced by insensitive white commentators.

While black players can be proud of their physicality, it is not all there is to them. There is no denying the fact that every sport requires a lot of energy and physical stamina. Both black/African athlete and their white counterparts exert much energy to win games. The English Premier League, to give a final example, is know to have commentators who describe black players, not for their technique, but their pace, physicality, and power. Hardly are similar descriptions used when extolling white players that are equalling strong. Think of players from Scandinavia.

To reduce only the black athlete to their physicality in media discourse is a reductionist gesture that denies their creativity and the aesthetic vision of black sportsmen and women. African and black sportsmen are more than their bodies. The coverage of black bodies and the discourses around them require an urgent rewriting.

https://medium.com/@yeku.james/the-myth ... 3323cb8f32
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Re: Damning article on racist media re African players

Post by marko »

The only way to shut the mouths of stupid pundits is by winning games, end of
So angry Nigeria got kicked out of the world cup once again, i nearly told my wife that i caught my girlfriend with another man today!

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Re: Damning article on racist media re African players

Post by Cristao II »

Waffiman wrote:
Benedict Iroha wrote:
Waffiman wrote:
Enugu II wrote:
sayala wrote:Thats a bogus / useless article. There is nothing racist about saying Senegal have pace and power. African should not be claiming racism at everything.

Also it is true that African teams are tactically and technically inept. It does not mean Africans are less intelligent. And you cannot argue with the results.
It is racist when a defined racial group of people are stereotyped with particular trait. That is exactly what this is. If you cannot see that as racist characterization then perhaps are you agreeing with the commentators that certain races have solely those traits? The point is that all persons, regardless of race, are in fact imbued with similar characteristics as humans.
Spot on.

This reminds of Alan Sugar's tweet yesterday, and those White people who asked why it was racist.

Sugar, said the Senegalese team looked like poor migrant Africans who hawk good in Marbella beaches. I responded, by asking if he saw all the Black contestants in his Apprentice show as the Africans he has seen on Marbella beach.

People just don't seem to understand the mentality behind such comments.
That was an unnecessary comment. All these oyibos feel they are just free to talk anyhow since Trump has been president.
I agree.

Trump has indeed emboldened racists.
Alan Sugar said that? :oops: :oops: :oops: What a disgraceful human being.
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sayala
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Re: Damning article on racist media re African players

Post by sayala »

F360 wrote: Parents have to pay for their kids to play...on certain types of club teams.
Parents have to pay for MOST types of clubs
Now with the advent of MLS academies, a number of quality young players don't have to do that. FC Dallas is an example as they have done well with an academy in reaching out to the tons of latino kids in the area and finding some good ones. Same with LA Galaxy.
MLS academies start at U13. This means a parent still has to pay for their child starting from age six until they are eligible to play for an MLS team.
Secondly MLS academies only operate in a few cities. What happens to children who want to play but don’t have an MLS academy near them? The answer is that they can only play if their parents pay. And this is the case for MOST
Also for a lot of kids that can't afford it, if the player is good enough, a number of coaches of those pay to play youth teams will do whatever they can to keep the kid on the team.
From my experience, this is very rare
Lol at the Klinsmann mention. The man who conned US Soccer into believing he would be a savior as a coach AND a technical director of the entire program including youth teams.
What poor neighborhood did Hummels, Mueller and Neuer grow up in? Some of the Turkish-German immigrant players for sure, but the others werent growing up in German "Favelas". It varies country by country imo.
It’s a fact that in most countries, poorer kids are more likely to gravitate towards a sport. This is because they have less options in life and sports is usually their only outlet. This is especially true in the US. Of course there are exceptions.
If soccer was available in poor neighbourhoods in the US you would find a lot more international caliber players.

Finally, the narrative that "the best athletes in the USA still gravitate towards American football, basketball, baseball etc" is ridiculous and lazy. So we're just assuming that Soccer is all about athleticism or mainly about that?
Who said soccer is only about athleticism?
Being athletic is not required. But is sure helps. You can mention Modric all you want. But even in soccer, the greatest players often have athleticism/speed/quickness be it Ronaldo, Messi, Maradona, Pele etc.
Agility is even important for goalkeeper. Many of the top USA goalkeepers were high caliber basketball players. Brad Friedel for example was given a scholarship to play basketball at UCLA.
The USA have excellent athletes but that doesn't mean Soccer would have been the right sport for LeBron, Kobe, Trout, Harper, Julio Jones, etc.
Allen Iverson would have made an excellent player. As would many NFL wide receivers.
sayala
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Re: Damning article on racist media re African players

Post by sayala »

How comical is this? People on this thread are mad because western media is referring to Africans as fast and powerful.
Meanwhile there is another thread where your fellow Africans are saying African teams are useless, dumb, naive ,one dimensional, stupid and so forth.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=289839

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