As usual in a football season there have been many highly contentious issues that have been debated among those involved at all levels of football. Currently match-fixing corruption and FIFA’s announcement of goal-line technology at the 2014 World Cup are making the rounds. Both are issues worthy of discussion, particularly the corruption topic, but one common factor in the contemporary culture is that these stories seemingly disappear almost as quickly as they arrive on the scene in a huge frenzy.
Academic Garry Whannel termed this process “vortextuality”, whereby a news story becomes so prominent so quickly it effectively relegates other news or knocks it off the radar unless it can be connected to the story and takes over the media landscape, both mainstream and independent, sucking in all around it until it closes up.
This vortextuality seems an apt way of defining how the media works, but what it also highlights is the fact that all news, no matter the subject, suffers the same fate. This is not ideal when there are some subjects that need constant discussing, and should not fall away from public attention. The issue of racism in football this season has arguably fallen into this vortextuality category.
Towards the end of October 2012 the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) announced that they had come up with a six-point plan to tackle racism in English football. All well and good, but barely a murmur has been heard on this topic since.
Through the use of their Twitter account changeFIFA , a group that looks to question and reform football’s governing body, have made references to the fact that it has been over 100 days since this plan was announced and tweeted the PFA and players like Clarke Carlisle asking the simple question of whether there have been any developments.
As of the time of writing there do not seem to have been any further announcements as to how this action plan is going to be employed.
It must be noted that to implement a full-scale nationwide plan for all footballers, clubs and organisations will of course take time as there are many different parties to engage with. To be able to get sustained change, things will need to be analysed in-depth as no quick-fix solution would work.
But the likes of changeFIFA and others are not asking for specific guidelines and big decisions being made in a rush, what is being stated is that the issue of racism in British football is very important and should not fall out of the public consciousness when other stories come along.
Saying something will be done and doing something are completely different, and it is time for the PFA and other organisations within the English game to bring this issue back to the fore and look to develop an achievable plan. Just because it may not be making headline news anymore it does not mean the racism issue has gone away; the only way to make it truly go away is to address it. Let’s not wait for another media vortex to pop up a few years down the line to get something done.
For more from me, find me on Twitter: @dmsmith1987
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