In 2021, I thought a lot about the nonsensical ‘othering’ in football

Published on 4 December 2021

On 11 July, at about 10.20pm, Bukayo Saka stepped up to take a penalty at Wembley Stadium. It was the final of the UEFA European Football Championship – an event never previously experienced by England’s men’s national team. If 19-year-old Saka failed to score, Italy would win the tournament. Every England fan was behind him: limbs clenched, palms sweaty, clutching at strangers in beer gardens as they roared him on. It didn’t matter to Spurs, Liverpool or Leeds fans that he was an Arsenal player: he was One of Ours.

Most of the time, cheering for a player who plays for a club you don’t support is unheard of, especially if they play for your local rivals or a team with which yours ‘has previous’. You may loan them your support for a single match if they are playing against an even more serious rival, but then normal service resumes. A tribal identity – the creation of an ‘Us’ that is different from ‘Them’ – is very much a part of British football’s DNA. No other major sport has the same need for opposition fans to be segregated in our stadiums and separated by police as they walk through our cities. On match days, the opposition players, supporters, plus the referee, are convenient Others who we can rail against. Most of the time, your footballing identity is part of the fun: it is friendly rivalry and harmless heckling and this is as far as it should ever go. And then, every two years there’s an international tournament (this year it was the Euros) and the rivalries are suspended as we unite as one against Another Other.

Back to that night in July. As Italy’s keeper beat away Saka’s spot kick, the first feeling was unanimous disappointment among most England fans.

But for those of us who know football and are familiar with social media, a foreboding swept in. Three England players missed penalties that night: Sako, Sancho and Rashford. All three are black. It wouldn’t be the colour of their club shirt that a certain section of society would now see. It would be the colour of their skin. For them, football-based ‘othering’ was replaced by racism. Football has a long history of racism both on and off the pitch. The tirade of racist abuse towards Sako, Sancho and Rashford was as predictable as it was abhorrent. Skin colour featured heavily in the opinions expressed about our three Lions’ failure to score from 12 yards out.

In 2021, I’ve thought a lot about how nonsensical ‘othering’ in football is, and where those often friendly rivalries end, and racism begins. I’ve been going to see my team for decades but it was the events around this year’s European final that led me to think more deeply about some of the things I’ve witnessed as a fan. 

At away matches, the home fans have always seen our fans and our players as The Other, and we’ve been very much treated as such – I’ve had bricks and bottles thrown at me at away grounds. But the gap between being The Other and One of Us can narrow very quickly too. At a match in the late 1980s, we’d been the visitors at a club with ‘that kind of reputation’, yet after the match their fans applauded us from the ground all the way back to the tube station. We’d been relegated that day and our constant support led them to see us as fellow long-suffering fans – no longer The Other but, in that moment, One of Us. 

Such moments are rare though and, more frequently, football-based ‘othering’ seems to sit all-too-easily alongside its nastier siblings. A few years previous to that story, my team’s goalkeeper was a local lad about the same age as me. Outside of football there would be no connection between us as we came from different parts of the city and had quite different backgrounds. He was a good keeper and naturally, since he was One of Us, I felt pride in his performances and, equally naturally, as One of Them he’d get stick from opposing fans. However, at one away match in the mid-1980s, the home fans gave him abuse that went far beyond the club versus club ‘othering’. He was black and they subjected him to racism.

He kept a clean sheet that day. 

There was an extra level of celebration because it was about more than his sporting performance. It was, in a small way, about striking back at the additional abuse he got because of the colour of his skin.

Thirty years on, the events of this summer showed that racism is still all too common in football in this country. In fact, the implicitly tribal nature of football seems to mirror the othering that goes on in the rest of our increasingly polarised society.

For most football fans, when that squad pulled on their England shirts this summer, they became One of Us. But a section of society always viewed them as The Other. For them, the whole team was The Other when they took the knee before matches. People would choose their adjectives to ‘other’ them: Woke. Over-privileged. Over-paid. For those people, taking the knee burst the bubble of national tribalism and the heroes became the villains. The cloak of being One of Us was only ever on loan. 

As the Italian team ran towards the corner flag to celebrate, we knew that the racists would rear their heads. We knew because they’d never gone away.