‘The victim should always be the priority’: how football is failing its anti-racism pledges
Guardian Sport
by Dipo FaloyinMarch 4, 2026
As the sport’s governing bodies and social media companies fail in their aim to safeguard, players are forced to fill the leadership vacuum
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Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. I’m standing in for Nesrine today – and while this newsletter is not, and has never wanted to be, a digest of “the week in racism”, sometimes events are so egregious that they force our hand. In the past few weeks alone, there have been multiple high-profile reports of online racial abuse targeted at footballers, as well as a number of on-the-field incidents that have led to matches being halted as the victims have sought, and largely failed to get, support from the on-field authorities. So this week, I want to look at the rise of abuse in football to better understand whether the sport’s governing bodies and social media companies are even capable of standing by their repeated promises to tackle racism in the sport.
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Originally published on Guardian Sport on 3/4/2026