The black footballer has been actively promoted within the English game since the mid-1970s.The agenda was always there, for it doesn't take an insightful genius to see that football, along with music and films, is the ultimate propaganda tool â€" it is the world's most popular sport, and definitely the most popular in Britain and Europe. What better way to mould the minds of impressionable young white children and teenagersthan through football? If the footballing heroes are black, then blacks shall consequently be accepted by British and European society with open arms (or so the theory goes...). Quite naturally, wherever black sportspeople are involved, the issue of "racism' must inevitably arise and must equally inevitably be "stamped out" by the powers of "good"Â, "tolerance"Â, and "open-mindedness"Â, thus providing a "salutary" lesson for all "misguided" or "ignorant" whites. Cue the ubiquitous "Kick Racism Out Of Football" campaign...<?: prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com
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It's amazing how quickly things can change. Back in the 1980s, sections of English fans would boo black players and pelt them with bananas, either real or of the large inflated variety. But following a few brief years of "re-education"Â the black player is now embraced as a hero, and most teams now field increasingly black, or even 100% non-white, lineups. Forget the composition of clubs' squads. Tally the number of non-whites on the field at any point in a match , as that's what the public sees and, therefore, that's what counts. <O
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Anyway, back to the agenda. In the 1980s, black players began to appear in England in ever greater numbers. There were a few in the 1970s, such as Viv Anderson, Cyrille Regis, and Laurie Cunningham, but they really came out of the woodwork in the second half of the 80s. As a kid back then I was completely football daft â€" a total fanatic (well, you'd have to be, supporting Peterborough United.
). Needless to say, I was less than impressed, as I could see that this trickle would eventually lead to today's vast fetidmarsh of reality â€" a reality which has been too much for me to stomach for the last nine to ten years. I was always decried as a "racist" whenever I mentioned that blacks were being forced upon the fans and that it would only be a very short matter of time before virtually all-black teams were the norm. Well, that time has nearly arrived. The English Premier League (funnily enough, the most watched league on the planet...) has almost fallen to the same level as the "American" sports which have always repulsed me for one reason only â€" blacks upon blacks upon blacks. How can one relate to a team full of people that are not of your own colour / race? The powers behind the English football establishment are seemingly moving mountains in order to emulate the disgraceful "standards" set by the French League â€" "la ligue d'Afrique..."Â<O
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When I was growing up, I noticed certain trends, which would continue through the 1990s â€" namely, that the black players who were introduced into top-flight teams disproportionately tended to be forwards, hence were highly visible and marketable. It would not matter if white players performed all of the creative lead-up work and the black striker simply tapped it in â€" the black would appear in the match highlights, and in newspapers and magazines, the great matchwinner with a beaten white goalkeeper in the background. The players the masses remember and admire the most are the goalscorers. What better way to acclimatise white fans to the presence of black players than placing them in the "glamour" positions? Just off the top of my head, I can name a heap of black, so-called "English"Â, strikers from that "formative era"Â: Regis, Mark and Brian Stein, Luther Blissett, John Fashanu (and his homosexual brother Justin), Rod and Danny Wallace, Brian Deane, Ian Wright, Michael Thomas, Mark Bright, Kevin Campbell, Les Ferdinand, David Rocastle, Dion Dublin, Robbie Earle, Efan Ekoku, Dalian Atkinson, Andy Cole, Chris Armstrong, Stan Collymore, Dean Sturridge, Emile Heskey, Marcus Gayle, Carl Cort, Jason Euell. Quite a lot, eh? In addition, plenty of "foreign" black strikers were imported during the period, such as Daniel Amokachi, Tony Yeboah, Dwight Yorke, Phil Masinga, Peter Ndlovu, Nwankwo Kanu, Nicolas Anelka, Pierre van Hooijdonk, Faustino Asprilla, Thierry Henry, and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink to name but a few.<O
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One can also add attacking midfielders to the high-profile "glamour"Â function of black players - names such as Laurie Cunningham, John Barnes, Mark Walters, Tony Daley, Trevor Sinclair, or even Ruel Fox. <O
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The common thread with many of these players was that they were hyped far out of proportion to their actual abilities. The media heaped almost American-style praise upon these very visible black players, emphasising their great importance to the game. The salient example was John Barnes, who was the 80s leftists' ultimate dream â€" a useful attacking black player born in Jamaica, speaking with a West Indian accent, and representing England. Interestingly enough, despite all of the endless eulogies, Barnes did not fulfil his ambition of playing for one of the big clubs in Italy or Spain, even though English clubs were banned from European competitions from 1985 following the Heysel Stadium Disaster. Continental clubs obviously weren't all that keen on his "magnificent" talents, even with the carrot of European football available to dangle before him... <O
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The launch of the Premier League in 1992 heralded a new age of commercialisation which sounded the death knell of traditional English football. The more popular English football became around the world in the 1990s, the more black players were recruited. This was being mirrored, on a lesser scale, throughout Europe (apart from France, the Netherlands, and Portugal, where the numbers of blacks were greater). English clubs were not only being stacked with non-white and foreign players, but were also increasingly owned by foreigners as well. This was the fatal decade in which Silvio Berlusconi, in his role as president of AC Milan, had implemented the rotational "turnover"Â policy of signing more than the three UEFA sanctioned foreigners permitted at a club, which paved the way for eventual changes in the UEFA rules. These changes opened the floodgates for hordes of Brazilians and Africans to pour into European football, destroying the identities of clubs, and altering the mindsets of supporters, throughout the continent. I recall Zvonimir Boban's comment that he would have a better chance of getting a game at Milan if he blackened his face, given the trend of signing black players. That statement, although well over a decade old, was eerily prophetic and perfectly encapsulates the current European situation.<O
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Sorry for the lengthy rant, but I still silently rail on a daily basis against the "system" which has taken the sport which I loved away from me, for I cannot watch what is on offer these days. Football was an integral part of my life and provided a source of joy and solace in formative years which were less than pleasant â€" now it is only a source of profound sorrow and boundless anger.
