Mario Balotelli, an Italian player, was tussling for control near the corner flag in a Serie A match for Brescia versus Verona in November 2019 when he heard monkey noises from the crowd.
In one of the most high-profile incidents of a player taking quick action against racial comments in the stadium, Balotelli, who is of Ghanaian heritage, kicked the ball into the stands and threatened to walk off the pitch. He was eventually persuaded to play on and scored a remarkable 85th-minute consolation goal, but the abuse was just the latest in a succession of terrible incidents at football fields around Europe in 2019.
Chelsea filed a UEFA complaint after forward Hudson-Odoi was harassed during a Europa League match in Kyiv in March. Because of racism from home fans, England’s Euro 2020 qualifier in Bulgaria had to be called off twice in October. Hateful screaming directed towards Amiens defender Prince Gouano caused a French Ligue 1 game to be stopped for several minutes in April. Then, in March 2020, the abuse abruptly came to a halt.
Stadiums were deserted as a result of the pandemic. When football resumed, fans had to get used to the strange sound of false crowd noise and managers’ yells reverberating through empty amphitheaters.
Some bit of change
As he watched the games on TV, Paolo Falco, an economics professor at the University of Copenhagen, began to wonder what effect the lack of spectators was having on the players, particularly those who were subjected to the greatest abuse from the stands.
He analyzed the achievements of African-born players in Italy’s top division before and after spectators were excluded from stadiums, along with colleagues Mauro Caselli and Gianpiero Mattera. The raw data came from a publicly available algorithm that combines data on goals, passes, assists, distance run, and other measures, and is typically utilized in fantasy football.
When the figures were crunched, the researchers discovered that Black athletes improved their performance by 3% between the first half of the 2019-20 season, when attendance was high, and the delayed final months, when attendance was low.
There was no difference for players from other ethnic groups. “The soundness of this comes from the fact that we observed exactly the same players before and after,” Falco says.
Of course, there are other factors at play here – a 3% improvement for an individual player over the course of a season is not unusual, but only the Black players showed it; another season in a foreign country means players are more settled, but the effect was lost for those who had arrived in Serie A from other European countries.
With the increased games played during the hotter summer months, the effect continues even when weather variables are controlled for.
No fans, less abuse
Players whose teams had been subjected to documented instances of racial abuse prior to lockdown improved the most, according to Falco and his associates.
Although the sample size is tiny, the findings are substantial. You’d be hard-pressed to come up with a simpler explanation for the rise than the unexpected absence of racial comments, according to Falco.
It’s possible that this is a particular issue in Italy, where the Italian Footballers’ Association reported over 600 occurrences over a six-year span.
Because racist abuse within a stadium is uncommon in the United Kingdom, it’s probable that the effect might be less noticeable in other leagues.
How were the players affected?
There’s no denying that racism has an impact on athletes in the moment; Balotelli’s reaction against Verona showed how outraged he was by the comments.
It’s also evident that little is being done about it – former Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson, for example, has already discussed how social media abuse before to a game damaged star player Wilfried Zaha.
Liam Rosenior, a former Brighton player, has also spoken out about being racially harassed by another player during a reserve game and being sent off as a result of his retaliation. But it wasn’t the abuse that bothered him the most; it was the referee’s lack of action.
Abuse, on the other hand, has a long-term and insidious effect. If Black players make a mistake or miss a penalty, as we witnessed in the Euro 2020 final, they may expect to be abused by the crowd or on social media. After the game, England player Bukayo Saka remarked, “I knew instantly the kind of hate that I was about to receive.”
Even if there aren’t racist events in every game, Falco thinks that the “anticipation effect” could be one explanation for the findings.
Falco’s quotes
“The African players do not play better at the cost of someone else playing worse,” he says.
“This tells us that the negative impact of racism is a net cost for the game as a whole – because there isn’t any other group that plays worse, the game as a whole got better after Covid.”
This isn’t to diminish the human cost of racial abuse, but to try and speak to football authorities in the only language they understand. “Football is based on the idea that fans all over the world like watching extraordinary people doing extraordinary things, and without that, the whole industry suffers,” Falco says.
“This is not just a moral, ethical issue – it’s an issue of economics and money, that’s what hopefully will make people do something about it.”
