Jan van Ours, Martin van Tuijl
Sports events are a unique public display of emotions and frustrations. In football, the noisy support of spectators is an integral part of the ‘beautiful game’, as each side attempts to intimidate the other and cheer their team to victory (van Ours and van Tuijl 2010). As a mentality of ‘us’ vs ‘them’ sets in, however, support for one’s team often turns into a language of disparagement and insult against the rival, which can rapidly descend into discriminatory and racist behaviour.
The problem of racism in football is well known, but it persists largely unabated. The insults received by black players on the English national team after the recent UEFA European Championship final are only the latest example of a deep-seated problem (Barnes 2018, Giuffrida 2019, Bassam 2020, Sky UK 2021). While it goes without saying that fighting racism in football is a moral imperative, little is known about the impact of racial harassment on the perfor