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The big blot on the beautiful game | On racism in football

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 03:23:00 +0000

France’s Kylian Mbappe’s response to tirades of Paraguay’s Celeste Amarilla that found backing from footballing fans and even the United Nations. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

France is gearing up to play its third consecutive semi-final at the FIFA World Cup. Having won the title in 2018 and lost the final in 2022, France is a favourite to go all the way this year too and could join West Germany and Brazil in the elite club of final ‘three-peat’ with a win against Spain on Tuesday (July 14, 2026). However, while France has been celebrated for their strong performances and champion mentality, this tournament saw them being at the receiving end of one of the most despised aspects of football, the racism that seems to be following it. From chants of people in rival nations’ jerseys questioning the heritage of French players to a Paraguayan Senator launching a blatant racist attack on the French captain and their talisman striker, Kylian Mbappe, the Blues have had to keep their focus on the ball on and off the pitch to avoid being distracted by the noises.

All the major footballing bodies, including the global regulator FIFA and the European agency UEFA, have been fighting racist incidents on and off the pitch for a long time. But the intensive campaigns and awareness initiatives seem to have done little to impact the countable portion of people who follow the game and resort to insensitive ramblings to deal with an unpleasant result. But despite the efforts from the governing bodies to protect players from such attacks, if not bring a change in the ‘ultras culture’, — a phenomenon in both club and country football where set of people establish themselves as a team’s hardcore fans and give themselves the privilege to resort to any means to demotivate opponents — online abuses and racial chants targeting specific players have gotten out of hand during the current edition of the tournament and players found themselves having to speak up instead of focusing on the game.

Mbappe’s response to tirades of Paraguay’s Celeste Amarilla that found backing from footballing fans and even the United Nations, and the legal actions being sought against her, brought the attention of many, given the high-profile back-and-forth that took place. However, not every player has the status of Mbappe to respond to abuses without messing up their mental state, and many are finding their social media accounts filled with insults and abuses for something as trivial as missing a pass or failing to convert a shot.

“Players shoulder the expectations of a nation, but this must never come at the cost of their safety, dignity or wellbeing, nor should abuse be dismissed as part of the game,” FIFPRO, an international organisation of professional footballers, said in a statement last week in response to the growing instances of racial and discriminatory abuses directed at the players. “In recent weeks, players have faced abuse online and in person, much of it racist and discriminatory. There has been intimidation and hostility beyond the pitch. These incidents are not isolated; they point to a systemic pattern that cannot remain an accepted part of football or society”, it said while calling for “collective action to protect players from a growing pattern of abuse that encompasses some media coverage, the aftermath of matches and team eliminations”.

While FIFPRO pointed at systemic pattern of abuse, it is paradoxical to contemplate that the game, fondly called by fans the beautiful game for its emotional impact on generations around the world, could be a system of abuse and insult. Most of the abuses circling football comes from the ‘manosphere’ that follows the game, and (while it would need psychological surveys to confirm this) the result of the fragile egos finding solace in systemic discrimination inherent in many modern societies. But it is not just in the gallery that racism, which UEFA says has no room in the game, finds space.

The 2026 World Cup brought in many rule changes to the game, aiming at making it more efficient. Among the changes was the Prestianni rule, notoriously named after Gianluca Prestianni, an Argentine international who was sanctioned last year for racial remarks against Brazilian star Vini Jr. During a club match for Benfica against Real Madrid. Prestianni used his palms to cover his mouth while making the remarks against Vini to make sure that the camera did not capture the lip movement, but it was picked up by the players and led to a ban for multiple games for Prestianni. FIFA introduced the new rule to discourage players from hiding behind the safety of unreadable lips to insult opposition players, sanctioning the act of covering the mouth while interacting with the other team as a red-card offence, with Paraguay’s Miguel Almiron being the first one to be punished under this rule during the group stage match against Turkiye.

Rising instances of racism

The FIFA Social Media Protection Service, an initiative to protect teams from being exposed to abusive and racist content online, scanned around 6 million posts and comments online during the group stage and flagged around 89,000 abusive contents, of which FIFA said 11% were racially motivated attacks. FIFA noted that, while this is only around a 3% increase from the same stage during the 2022 world cup, the content has become worse in terms of the use of abusive language.

While hateful language by fans is present unabated at one side, another form of racism has become institutionalised in the game. A recent study on bias in commentary on players, published by The Conversation, noted that people in the studio preferred to describe mental characteristics, like intelligence and calmness, of fair-skinned players while darker-skinned players found their physical traits, like size and strength, being admired during the games. The difference is merely a reflection of the institutionalised racism prevalent in American and European nations that is hard to notice in normal conversations.

Football has always been a game of beauty and perseverance, and as the UEFA tagline goes, there is no room for racism in it. But the reality is, from Pele and Eusebio to Mbappe and Vini Jr., artists of the game have had to listen to chants on their skin colour instead of their footwork at least once in their career, which is one more than the preferable number. And while these players answer to abuses with the ball on the ground, the culture is not something fans of the beautiful game should tolerate.

Published – July 14, 2026 08:53 am IST

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The curious case of Brazil’s disappearing ‘Jogo Bonito’ | Explained

admin — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 04:26:00 +0000

In his introduction to a memoir-based biography of Socrates, Johan Cruyff, the Dutch legend behind the revolutionary Total Football that evolved into the Tiki Taka, wrote: “It was a great shame that the beautiful Brazil team were eliminated by a destructive Italy in 1982… No one knows what would have happened had Brazil triumphed”.

Also read | The tarnished game: Trump, FIFA, and a suspended red card

Brazil, the proponents of Jogo Bonito, the beautiful game, have had the honour of seeing some of the greatest ever to touch the ball donning the canary yellow and blue. From the Didi, Garrincha, and Vava trio, each generation of football fans holds core memories of moving to the samba beats of their own set of selecaos. But the team of 1982, led by Socrates and graced by the likes of Zico, Toninho Cerezo, Leandro, Junior and Serginho, would be the epitome of Brazilian football and also one of the greatest teams ever not to attain World Cup glory. The clash between Italy and Brazil in the quarterfinals of the 1982 World Cup in Spain, however, is not remembered because a beautiful team lost; it marked the trajectory of the game that now stands at mechanised pragmatism with no place for flair.

The exit of Brazil from this year’s tournament, extending their wait since 2002 for a return to the top, underlines the fact that football has moved so far beyond the flair and pomp of the bygone-era of Brazilian dominance. While the way the team played in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, and how it has been playing in the last few years, shows that the team has understood the place pragmatism has in modern football, the successors of a long line of performers have had to trade their identity for a chance to fit in.

Brazil’s defeat in 1982 was in a match where not just two countries faced off, but two ideologies locked horn. Born out of the 1950 disaster of Maracana and polished by the Didi, Garrincha, Vava trio and then Pele, Brazilian Jogo Bonito is nothing short of the Brazilian carnival where the pitch becomes a stage and players turn performers. Goals are secondary; the primary objective is to entertain, themselves and the fans, in such a fashion that the ball becomes a ribbon, and even the opponents get spell-bounded by their movements. Italy on the other hand came with the Zona Mista, the mixed zone, where spaces are closed off rather than players sticking to a fixed opponent. And the defeat of the favourites, the proponents of beautiful football, by this modified version of Italian defensive rigidity caught the eyes of the world, with teams rushing to adapt it or make their own version of it: pragmatic football was being born, and so was capitalist football. “From that moment on the emphasis changed… the business side of the game grew frighteningly quickly… from that point on Brazilian football would never be the same,” Socrates, a revolutionary on and off the field who rallied players to take control of team management the same way he pushed them up the field during games, wrote on the 1982 defeat.

But one defeat did not wipe Jogo Bonito off the pitch. Brazil were still performers; they still danced up and down the pitch with the ball at their feet, and the world watched with awe. Socrates’s beautiful team made way to Dunga and co., with Bebeto, Romario, Rivaldo and others going on to win the world title 12 years after the defeat in Spain, and followed it up with another title, the unprecedented fifth, in 2002 with the three ‘R’s Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, and Rivaldo under Cafu. Throughout these generational changes, and while football transformed around them, Brazil stood true to its soul. Brazilians played the game in search of their rhythm on the pitch more than glory and indulged in extravagance outside. Of all the iconic performers who wore the canary yellow to have illustrious lives, Pele might be the only one so far to have had a long one.

Brazil’s Neymar reacts at the end of the World Cup round of 16 match between Brazil and Norway
| Photo Credit:
AP

Neymar Junior, who announced his retirement from the game after being knocked out by Norway, could be the last one who would rather see the game as a carnival in the streets of Rio de Janeiro, dancing his way past opponents, than a 90-minute exercise of tactical and technical precision and data analytics. In the years since Brazil’s last World Cup victory, players have started exploring European alleys from their home favelas, taking in the same pragmatic philosophy of the Italians that beat their ancestors. European football and Latin American football have always been different.

While Europe prefers a directed approach with just the opposition goalpost as target and wants their players to work like well-oiled machines on the pitch, Latin America has always been about the celebration of the game. Their players would not be in sync, and they would rather spin around their opponent to get the crowd on their feet than swap positions and switch play to get the ball into the box. But they would get the ball forward and score countless goals marked by their grace rather than precision. But now, Vinicius Junior runs up the wing with only two options on mind, get to the touchline and pass the ball in, or cut in from the wing and take a shot. In European footballing standards, this makes Vini a great threat for defenders to deal with. But for the Brazilian legacy, this is predictable play and will not make the crowd skip a heartbeat.

The first impulse of Vini, Rapinha, or Cunha when on the ball will be to burst forward with pace rather than finesse their way in. This pure attacking intent might be a strength for any other team in the world, but for Brazil, it is a lost identity. Pragmatic play might take Brazil to more titles in the future, but that will be a win for European style and the Italian philosophy.

For Brazil to have a proper Brazilian victory, Jogo Bonito, now synonymous with football itself, needs to be reinvented. Selecaos have the players who have the flair of their ancestors in their hearts. Now what they need to come back from the downfall is to be courageous enough to forget the game, the stakes, and celebrate.

Published – July 08, 2026 09:56 am IST

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