Euro 2024, politics, identity and diversity
Can sports be separated from politics? Euro 2024 proves that it is not the case. A conversation with Italian football journalist Valerio Moggia.
The world of sports, despite misguided narratives, has always been political and this is particularly true for a sport with popular origins like football.
At Euro 2024, elements of political discussion were due to be found, as the tournament started only five days after the European elections. While Spain triumphed over England, what were the political highlights?
Politics and diversity at Euro 2024
“The fact that Euro 2024 kicked off after the European elections may not matter too much to Italians, but it did in France, as the elections’ outcome led to the dissolution of the French National Assembly and the snap legislative elections,” says Valerio Moggia, football journalist, author and curator of the website on the intersection between football, politics and society Pallonate in Faccia says.
“ Players like Marcus Thuram and Ousman Dembélé explicitly called to vote to keep the far-right of Marine Le Pen out in these elections, while Kylian Mbappé adopted a more centrist approach, calling to vote against the ‘extremes’”.
Mbappé’s call was quite similar to Emmanuel Macron’s, who focused most of his electoral campaign against the Nouveau Front Populaire, the left-wing New Popular Front (which includes Les Écologistes, La France Insoumise, the French Communist party, the Socialists, Place Publique…) rather than against the far-right.
Considering this, it was not surprising that French Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra hailed Mbappè not so vague comments positively.
Macron followed the misguided approach of centrist forces to align the Left and the far-right; this strategy did not work in the end, as the President’s Renaissance came second after the NFP in the second round of elections on July the 7th, with the latter keeping the defeat of the far-right as its priority. The very political project of the Macronie is now in ruin.
How did French media react to the French’s players stance? The daily Le Parisien labelled the French male national football team as a “quiet force which stands against the Rassemblement National” and a symbol of the Republican block ( akin to the cordon sanitaire, sanitary cordon which has kep the far-right away from the levees of power in France). Dembélé, Tchouaméni, Marcus Thuram, Kounde and Konate also celebrated on their social the defeat of the Rassemblement National on social, as Mosaique FM reported.
The daily 20Minutes.fr instead criticised the way in which the players’ stance, while the RN politician Edwige Diaz said that the national team players do not understand the problems of the French people, as she was being interviewed on France Info.
The Azzurri: the least diverse national football team in Western Europe
The political discussions in football, in the male national teams seem to disappear by simply crossing the Alps into Italy, something which is reflected in the lack of diversity and representation within the Azzurri ranks.
Back in 2021, the Azzurri’s approach to the protests of Black Lives Matter and Take the Knee was an awful example of cerchiobottismo, an Italian term which describes an attitude aimed at not taking a clear position on a specific matter, a classical vice of Italian politics. Three years later, the situation has not improved, as the reaction of the world of football towards the case of (alleged) racist insults from Inter defender Maurizio Acerbi against Napoli player Juan Jesus proved.
“Sports in general, and football should be reflective of society. In Italy, it is evident that there is a problem with this. The problem also needs to be understood though, as while the lack of representation of minorities is an issue, it can be difficult to answer the question “Who should have been summoned?”.
Moggia looks at players like Moise Keane, who now at 24 is a reserve for Juventus, after showing much promise, making his summoning unlikely, but on the other hand, some players chose to play for other national teams, the ones of the countries where they or their parents were born, like Amigo Alfred Junior Gomis, who trained in the Torino youth team and is a goalkeeper for the Senegalese national football team, or Adam Masina, a Torino player who chose to play for Morocco.
While these choices are not uncommon for other European players of African descent, the issue around diversity in football could work as an additional factor for these players’ decisions.
While players like Keane and Gnonto have not been able to keep up with the expectations of their beginnings, as Moggia explains, there are also other elements around class, for instance. Access to professional football training at certain levels is often not affordable for children of migrants, not to mention that in general, only a tiny fraction of players eventually manage to reach the national team.
Then there are also the discriminatory citizenship laws of the Italian state (based on ius soli, blood right) that are likely to hinder athletic prospects, among many others.
While all of this is true about football, Italian athletes of African descent shine in other sports, from athletics to volleyball, like the stars of the Italian female national team, Myriam Sybilla and Paola Egonu to tennis, where Jasmine Paolini celebrated her Ghanaian roots at Wimbledon, reaching the women’s final.
Back to the Italian football team, there are also very few players of North African descent, as Moggia observes, even though they are a big part of the Italian population. Overall, the Italian male national football team remains now the least diverse all over Western Europe.
Diversity in football against the narratives of the European far-right
Other moments at Euro 2024 can be seen as politically charged, like Spain’s striker’s Lamine Yamal celebration following their victory over France on Tuesday the 9th of July.
The Barcelona and national team star, born to a Moroccan father and a Guinean mother grew up in the working class borough of Rocafonda, in Mataró, 20 miles from Barcelona, and paid tribute to his roots by making a gesture representing the number 304 (08304 is the full postal code of the area).
Yamal and Nico Williams’ roles were fundamental in Spain’s victory. The Atletico Bilbao and national team’s star story is also one of struggles when it comes to his family, as they reached Melilla crossing the Sahara desert barefoot in the 1990s.
The political significance of this has to do with the fact that Santiago Abascal, leader of the far-right Spanish party VOX has often rallied against the working class and diverse neighbourhoods like and including Mataró, demonising them as “multicultural shitholes”.
In England, the former coach Gareth Southgate may not have “brought football home” (a very debatable narrative, to be fair, as football's oldest roots can be found among the Aztecs, with the Tchahali game, the ancient Chinese cuju and Aboriginal Marn Grook), but his role has been central in changing the conversation around English identity, succeeding, to an extent, in taking away the conversation and the flag of St.George from the grips of the English far-right which have long appropriated it.
While, as Moggia observes, conversations around racism seem to occur for national teams representing countries, where racism on and off the pitch is not the norm, unlike Italy or Spain, surveys like the one by the German public broadcaster ARD found that 21% of respondents would prefer a national team with “more players with white skin” (a survey condemned by Germany coach Julian Nagelsmann as “absolutely racist” ) are indicative of the challenges for European football as a whole, in terms of diversity, inclusion and tackling racism, especially amid the rise of the far-right in the continent.
That rise is not over anywhere, not even in France, where Le Pen’s prospect remains the long game for the 2027 Presidential Elections.
What is certain is that European footballers of African and non-white descent will continue to make their voices heard, to represent how much.
That’s all for this week, folks. The last edition of Brit Beats will be available next week, before August’s break. Here are some more suggestions for podcasts and stories of interest.
Good reads, good sounds, must-watch
“We’re all getting attacked”. How disorder broke out in East Leeds, by Craig Gent, Novara Media
Ireland’s far-right, by Daniel Finn, The London Review of Books