Introduction

A number of controversies in the past decade or so have highlighted the ways in which questions about race and national identity remain an important facet of contemporary football cultures, both in the context of club football and in relation to the England national team. Whether it is to do with individual players, such as John Terry, or more generally football as a whole, we have seen ongoing debates about how best to tackle the question of racism in football at national and local levels (Football Association, 2012a; House of Commons Culture Media and Sport Committee, 2012a, 2012b). Perhaps because during the 1990s and 2000s there were numerous initiatives to tackle popular expressions of racism in football, alongside evidence of greater representation of Black and ethnic minority players in professional football, there was an expectation that questions about race and racism would gradually diminish in importance. But at key points over the past decade, evidence emerged that meant we could not assume that questions about racism in football would gradually diminish in importance. This is evident in the growing bodies of scholarship that addressed the changing expressions of racism in football, including research focused on fan cultures and research on institutions (Cleland and Cashmore, 2013; Cashmore and Cleland, 2014; Burdsey, 2021; Kassimeris et al, 2022).

A recent event that highlighted the continuing role of racism in football took place in the aftermath of the defeat of England by Italy in the final of the UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) European Football Championship in 2020 (Euro 2020), which led to a wide-ranging public discussion about the use of racist tropes against Black players such as Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka, who were blamed by some supporters for the defeat (Back and Mills, 2021).