Rowe’s article ‘Stages of the global’ shows both the positive and negative effects that media has upon football. On one side the media is capable of broadcasting football to the world. Just as our classroom shows, people from across the world cheer for teams thousands of miles away. Cable television and the internet have allowed fans unprecedented access to their teams and even spread the fan bases. Media forms take a large portion of the credit in making soccer the world beloved sport that it is today.
However, the media also provides a view into some of the darker sides of soccer. Rowe focuses specifically on the incident of French captain Zinedine Zidane head butting Italian player Marco Materazzi. This incident, sparked by racial slurs was broadcasted multiple times over the course of the game and the World Cup. Having such heavy media available during the games helped to high-light the incident to the point where it over shadowed the events of the game. Lip-readers and translators were hired to find out what Materazzi said to instigate this attack by Zidane, with each giving their description of the racist words, trying to out do one another. It was a spectacle to say the least, one which highlighted the large amounts of racism that continue to plague soccer.
But for all of the bad publicity the incident did bring racism to the forefront of soccer discussion. Over the past years I have noticed an increase in the reporting of racism in soccer, particularly in European leagues. While these reports do tarnish the reputation of players and the clubs they address the problems head on, preventing a culture of silence from prevailing.
Quotations
That the globalization of sport might ‘coincide with’ – if not be linked casually to -right-wing racism in the wider society has, alongside the urgings of anti-racists and other sports governance critics who have accused FIFA of complacency, prompted its globally oriented anti-racism campaign
Questions
- While media coverage of racism in soccer serves to shed light on an ugly subject how much damage can it cause as well? For instance the constant replay of Zidane’s headbutt and the subsequent media attention given to it could be construed as soccer being an inherently racist sport.