DARREN MARA: In England, football is more than a game.
MAN: I can't imagine my life without football.
Just the feeling of 30,000 people together chanting, all in it for one.
That feeling is indescribable.
DARREN: For supporters like Ifshaan Mahmoud, it's a way of life.
But like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,
the beautiful game can't shake its ugly side...
SPECTATOR: Fucking Muslim cunt.
DARREN: ..fuelled by hooliganism, racism, Islamophobia and online hate.
Later this year, the game's global showpiece, the FIFA World Cup,
will be watched by over a billion people.
The advertising blitz already well under way.
So with its image on the line now more than ever, what's being done
to remedy football's racist reputation?
It's Saturday, and in the north of England, Middlesbrough FC has
a crucial match in the country's second tier competition,
the Championship.
I'm meeting one of the club's biggest fans.
Ifshaan, nice to meet you.
IFSHAAN: Yeah, finally. Please come in.
DARREN: Thank you so much.
- Big match today. - Yeah, it's a massive match.
Three points today keeps the play-offs alive.
DARREN: Yeah, sure.
IFSHAAN: It's been six years since we last got promoted.
DARREN: Wow, there's so much on the line.
- IFSHAAN: Yeah, we need a win today. - Do you ever miss a match?
IFSHAAN: No, we plan everything around the fixtures.
We travel up and down the country.
DARREN: Oh, wow. You've got your own football field.
IFSHAAN: Yes, we're football crazy.
Who's the best player?
Oh, yeah, OK.
You've got some competition, Ifshaan.
After the warm-up, it's time to get to the main event.
- MAN: Have you got the tickets? - IFSHAAN: Yeah, got the tickets.
I always knock on wood before a match.
- For good luck? - Yeah.
- Nice. - MEN: Up the Boro!
Up the Boro!
For Ifshaan and his family, it's the beginning of a long day
full of rituals.
IFSHAAN: So this is my place of worship.
So we come here on a match day for Zuhr prayer,
which generally takes place around 1:30, 2pm.
- OK. - So it fits in ideal to a match day.
So your two passions in life, you've got your faith
and then your football.
Yes, they're a way of life, really. And obviously, family as well.
- Of course, the three F's. - Yeah.
Right.
DARREN: Middlesbrough is home to the largest Muslim community
in England's north-east and it's grown rapidly over
the last 20 years.
Its relationship with football could best be described as complicated.
DARREN: So has he been afraid to go?
You could say, yeah, he's been afraid.
DARREN: With Islamophobia on the rise,
tensions in the community flared in 2014
when three Middlesbrough supporters ripped up and appeared
to burn pages of a Koran during a match.
Other fans were shouting and chanting.
IFSHAAN: There was outrage at the time.
Why would someone take a book of worship into a stadium just
to antagonise a population?
And obviously, burn it, tear it, in front of the camera to make a point?
It upset the whole BAME community as a whole.
DARREN: The term Ifshaan uses, BAME, is shorthand for
black, Asian and minority ethnic.
IFSHAAN: I think that's highlighted underlying tensions
within the community.
People feel like they have more freedom to express their views.
And obviously, since Brexit, there's been an uptake
in the percentage in hate crimes.
Majority of them being racism crimes.
(PRAYER CONTINUES)
DARREN: As fans pour into the stadium,
I leave Ifshaan to meet lifelong Middlesbrough supporter
Danny Chapman.
For him, religion and football are one and the same.
So this is your house of worship?
Oh, yeah, definitely, yeah.
We drive down the A66, which is obviously the main road
next to the stadium and you go, "Oh, there's church."
And, for us, it's every Saturday you're going.
If you're not travelling away to watch the Boro,
then you're coming home.
3-nil Boro!
Riley McGree hat trick, we're going up!
Up the Boro.
DARREN: So you've got passionate fans like that and then you've got
another element in the crowd, which might be a bit more
antagonistic towards people of diverse backgrounds, right?
- That racism does exist in the game. - Oh, it does, yeah, definitely.
Certain areas where you go in the country where certain people
won't feel comfortable going there.
Like, I know certain away games, certain coloured people,
certain ethnic people won't travel there because of what's going on.
DARREN: As this community has changed, Danny and Ifshaan can see
there are underlying tensions that are rising to the surface.
(WHISTLE BLOWS)
Most clubs monitor for racism and hooliganism on match day,
but many incidents fall through the cracks.
And it can manifest like this.
This clip shows the abuse of Mo Salah,
who stars for Liverpool in the Premier League.
And here, a fan captured more abuse of Salah after another match.
This social media post shows anti-Semitism.
This post, abusive chants against a black player.
And this post is anti-South Asian.
It's racism experienced not just by fans, but players too.
DARREN: As a professional footballer, Louis Saha experienced racism
up close and personal.
As a 25-year-old, Saha was thrust onto the world stage when he signed
with arguably the world's biggest club, Manchester United.
He later moved to Everton FC,
where he was targeted on social media with this racist post.
DARREN: And it wasn't just in England.
Saha also experienced racism playing in Italy.
He says football across Europe, and globally, is creaking
under the weight of racism.
DARREN: And not just at club level.
The European Championships and World Cup have also been impacted.
As this clip shows, Nazi salutes at a Euros qualifier in Bulgaria
in 2019, which was stopped twice by officials.
This footage shows monkey chants
at a World Cup qualifier in Hungary last year.
COMMENTATOR: A recent gesture towards Sterling.
DARREN: It culminated last year, after the European Championships
final at Wembley in London.
Racism that shook the game to its core and sparked a national
outcry in England and around the world.
Three England players - Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka
and Jadon Sancho - were subjected to a tidal wave
of online racial hate
after missing crucial penalties in the final against Italy.
DARREN: At the University of Cardiff,
a team led by Professor Matt Williams has been analysing
the social media racist attacks against those three
England players last year.
Hey, Matt. How are you doing?
MATT: Most players come in for some flak when they underperform,
but when it's a black player underperforming,
they very often have their identity targeted in this very negative,
and in this case, very deeply racist way.
So we see here Italy scoring the equaliser.
And this is where we start to see the hate speech increase.
So we see this humungous spike in hate speech
around the first penalty miss.
And we see hate speech posts reach around about 380 per hour
at the maximum there.
And it continues as the misses keep coming.
And it's all anti-black hate speech.
It's targeting Rashford, Sancho and Saka, specifically.
Either directly targeting them on Twitter,
but also on Facebook and Instagram.
And that lasts until around midnight, after the match.
So what was the nature of the racial abuse
the players were facing at this time?
What you can see here is particular keywords,
particular racial slurs being very, very prominent.
It's some of the worst hate speech you could really come across.
Yeah, it's pretty ugly stuff.
And what we find is, around about 50% of the accounts
that say they're in the UK were the ones that were sending
the hate speech.
The remainder were coming from outside the UK.
DARREN: A police investigation led to a handful of arrests
and a few prison terms in the UK, but the online abuse coming
from abroad remains unpunished.
So it begs the question, how does FIFA protect players
across international jurisdictions at a global event like a World Cup?
MATT: It's a huge problem.
It's a huge problem that requires a lot of coordination
between governments, between the social platforms themselves,
FIFA and the players.
So it's entirely plausible that at the Qatar World Cup later this
year, we could see the exact same racial abuse that we witnessed
last year in the Euro final?
Unfortunately, yes. And we entirely expect to see it.
DARREN: A recent survey by anti-racism group Kick it Out
highlights the abuse Professor Williams speaks of.
It showed 71% of fans had witnessed racist comments on social media
directed at a footballer, while around half had seen racism
directed at another fan.
And it's not just online.
One third of them said they'd heard racist comments
or chants at a match.
Back in Middlesbrough, it's half-time,
and I've found Ifshaan at the game.
He tells me being in the crowd can be confronting
as a person of colour.
IFSHAAN: You experience it now, still, when the football players
take the knee, there's booing around the stadium,
which for me is intolerable, really.
DARREN: Many players began taking the knee as a statement against racism
during the Black Lives Matter movement.
But as this clip from 2020 shows, even that became divisive...
..with many fans booing rather than supporting the players.
IFSHAAN: It upsets me quite a lot because, obviously, taking the knee
is how the players want to express their support for movements
of discrimination in the game.
My question to the people that do boo is, what is the alternative?
DARREN: So in collaboration with the club,
Ifshaan and his friend Amjid Khazir created a special supporters group
to act as a voice for the black, Asian and minority ethnic community.
They called the group Boro Fusion.
IFSHAAN: One of the aims of Boro Fusion
is to obviously break down barriers,
tackle the racism problem, get more of the BAME community
feeling like the stadium is a safe environment for themselves.
But Amjid says diverse supporter groups and safe spaces
can only go so far.
AMJID: Education is the key.
People don't understand what Black Lives Matter is.
People don't understand why we're so passionate about anti-racism.
So when they're booing taking of the knee, it just goes to show
how much more work needs to be done to educate people about racial
and social justice, not only here in the UK and in our town
but right around the world.
DARREN: Ifshaan, does it feel like you come to a game
with a certain amount of baggage because of that?
(CROWD ROARS)
DARREN: On the other side of the stadium,
I catch up with Danny Chapman.
I want to know how he views the racism and the uneasy divide
in his football community.
DANNY: It should never have come to that.
It should be that anybody of any area, of any country
should be able to come, walk into a stadium and support -
well, not even support, just be able to watch the football.
DARREN: But is this divide a hang-up from hooligan culture?
DANNY: The hooliganism's more of a tribal thing.
It's this is our patch, that's your patch.
And I think that's more to do with the old-school generation.
And a lot of fans watching stuff where it's trying to be territorial,
like, sort of like the alpha male.
Like the racism,
you tend to see more racism on the social media side of things.
DARREN: There must be some certain attitudes towards non-white people
ingrained in that hooligan community.
DANNY: I'd say there is.
You see a lot of them with the far-right groups
and going on the marches, and racism chants and stuff like that.
And it's all white power, but you don't see them
in the stadiums singing their chants.
DARREN: But they say, a lot of people, once they get
out of the stadium, that's where the racism comes out because there aren't
the consequences of getting a season ban.
Yeah, that could be... that could be a thing,
and I know that happens, especially away days.
And people can shout abuse and there's no consequences,
so people still believe they can get away with it.
DARREN: Professor Matt Williams has identified three main
hate speech culprits in football.
The first, he calls mission offenders.
MATT: They kind of are the full-timers.
They're the individuals that live by a code
that's hateful in some way.
They're a small group.
They would make up those kinds of hooligan groups.
DARREN: Next, defensive and retaliatory haters.
MATT: These are individuals who essentially react
to their territory being invaded.
DARREN: And thirdly, thrillseeking haters.
Those that embark on hateful discourse because it seems
like something others are doing
and it seems like a fun thing to do in the moment.
(SUPPORTERS CHANT)
DARREN: Research from the Radicalisation Awareness Network
shows far-right groups continue to see football fans
as fertile grounds for recruitment.
MAN: Wanker.
ALL: (CHANT) E-E-EDL. E-E-EDL.
DARREN: In 2009, the English Defence League formed...
We're all together.
Nothing to do with football hooliganism, this, lads.
We're all together.
DARREN: ..as various hooligan firms coalesced
under a single banner, opposing Islam.
We are reintroducing patriotism, Britishness, Englishness.
DARREN: And more recently, a group called
the Democratic Football Lads Alliance,
accused of peddling anti-Muslim bigotry
and attracting thousands to rallies around the UK.
MATT: So this in-group, out-group dynamic is actually what we identify
as a key ingredient to hatred in society more generally.
So this notion of us versus them, and that is something that's
embedded into the game itself.
And it is starting, I believe, to bleed out into more general fans.
- Morning. - Morning.
Or afternoon. How we doing? Alright?
DARREN: But some are fighting back by trying to start a conversation.
(SPEAKS ARABIC)
None of you speak Arabic, no?
The words I've just spoken in Arabic translate to
"May the peace and blessings of Almighty God be upon all of you."
DARREN: Amjid, who I met at the Middlesbrough football match,
is holding an anti-extremism workshop for the club's under-16s team.
AMJID: We started them after my Uncle Zabir passed away.
He was assaulted in 2011 by a young man
who was formerly a football scholar himself.
Who's heard of the EDL or Tommy Robinson, yeah?
English Defence League? Tommy Robinson?
The far-right had marched in this town, the first time they'd come
this far north in nearly 20 years
and they marched in Middlesbrough in 2011.
My Uncle Zabir, a taxidriver, picked up a fare,
and as my uncle turns around to face forward, he strikes him
over the back of his head with this bottle of Beck's.
My uncle's injured and he's bleeding from the back of his head
and the lad, what we can only presume goes through his mind next is,
"I haven't done enough damage."
So he runs back to where my uncle is stood, jumps off both feet
and fly kicks my uncle in the chest, what we call a drop kick.
Six weeks after that incident, my Uncle Zabir died
of a massive double heart attack.
And they found a message that the lad had sent on his phone -
and I won't use the language here today but he basically said
he was going to do a person of... a Pakistani person in.
AMJID: We have charged language on immigration post-Brexit,
post-Black Lives Matter.
We've had issues of racism on the increase post-COVID.
Chinese communities have been blamed,
immigrant communities have been blamed,
Jewish communities have been blamed.
If we don't address this, we are going to have an issue
of people fighting in the streets.
And what I want each of you to do,
grab a pen or a pencil from here
and just write down one value that means something to you.
- I've put equality. - AMJID: Equality. Brilliant answer.
- Next one. - Positive.
AMJID: Why positive?
Through tough times, always be positive.
- Makes everyone more happy. - AMJID: What a great answer.
Can we get a round of applause for that one?
I think we have to get away from this sloganistic approach.
Kick It Out, you know, wearing T-shirts, all well and good,
but is the message actually being heard
by the people it needs to be heard by?
There do seem to be some elements and some clubs
to who it's just lip service.
It's ticking a box, it's a post-it on the wall.
DARREN: Dateline approached over a dozen professional clubs
and only Middlesbrough FC would speak with us.
Amjid says for his strategy to work,
all clubs must be part of the discussion.
MAN: We had a racist incident last year with a boy,
and he failed to say anything for about two years
and he just kept it to himself.
And then eventually broke down,
told his mum, and then Mum contacted the club.
Does it alarm you to know that, you know, there are thousands
of football clubs across this country and if the experience
that that young player had here is replicated across the country,
how much of it might be going unreported?
And how many people who are experiencing racism
may never speak out about it?
Yeah, it's probably like an iceberg.
But I think, if we, as a football club, are happy to share
that we've had issues, I think that's massively important.
Can we get a decent smile, lads, or not?
If one person can be taken off that trajectory,
on that pathway of hate, that could save so many lives.
This is literally about life and death.
DARREN: Football has a fight on its hands against racism
and not just in the professional game.
I want to know if the racism problems at the elite level
are mirrored at the grassroots level.
So I've come here to Mile End football pitches in East London.
It's pretty much the essence of grassroots community football.
There's a push for greater diversity at both the elite and amateur levels
of football, but some say that change is coming too slowly.
MAN: These kinds of subconscious biases are still around,
whether we want to hear it or not.
But that's the truth.
And if you think there's racism at the top level of the game,
just imagine what it's like at grassroots.
Because this is society, this is community.
DARREN: Imrul Gazi used to manage a team called Sporting Bengal,
here at Mile End.
It's one of the UK's biggest clubs for South Asian players.
IMRUL: It's a different type of racism here in 2022.
DARREN: What's different about it?
IMRUL: It's not so much in-your-face.
It's the way someone might look at you,
the way they might talk to you.
Talk down to you, little things like you'll go to shake their hands
and they won't shake your hands.
DARREN: In 2019, Imrul's team were on the receiving end
of what he says was some of the worst racism he's ever experienced.
But it wasn't coming from the usual source.
This wasn't players, this wasn't opposition management,
this wasn't supporters in the stands, these were officials.
DARREN: Officials employed by the local league but ultimately
part of England's national Football Association, the FA.
IMRUL: That's the one that got sent off, the assistant.
So they were, like, squaring up to each other.
MAN: Are you fucking having a laugh?!
And you're the fucking ref?!
IMRUL: Where it all started was the linesman said
to my assistants and my staff, he said it a few times,
"Why is it youse lot always have to make noise?"
You lot being you South Asian players?
Yeah. It's the way, the tone.
And all evening he'd been saying things to us.
Right.
And it was the tone in which he said it.
So at that stage, that player ran over to me,
grabbed me by my shirt, says, "Ims, Ims, come here. Say that again."
He went to the ref, "Say what you just said to me again. Say it again."
Yeah.
And the ref was, like, just started smiling and walked away.
DARREN: Imrul walked his team off the pitch,
citing covert racism from the officials.
He lodged a formal complaint with the local FA,
which found the assistant ref guilty of improper conduct.
But Imrul says the process of reporting was so gruelling
he ultimately stepped away from the game.
IMRUL: We were the victims, yet it seemed during the whole
process that we were the guilty party.
I think it's come to a stage not just with me, where with most
incidences of racism in grassroots football,
people just don't bother reporting it.
DARREN: So a lot would go unreported?
Of course it will. Because of exactly what we've...what I went through.
I would never report an incidence of racism ever again,
because of the heartache and the time and the effort that goes into it.
(ANGRY SHOUTING)
Where does the buck stop for this?
The buck ultimately stops with the authorities.
- DARREN: With the FA? - With the FA.
With the professional clubs.
They have a massive role to play in this.
DARREN: But with racial tensions charged
and the World Cup on the horizon,
I want to know where Imrul thinks all this could lead.
If we get to a semifinal and we get the likes of Saka,
the likes of Sterling taking a penalty and they miss,
110% you will see exactly what happened in that European Cup final.
I have absolutely no doubt.
Sad.
DARREN: In a statement to Dateline, the FA said
it "stands firmly against all forms of discrimination".
It's launched new research to gain feedback on discrimination reporting
processes in grassroots football
and it's working with the UK government and social media platforms
to tackle online hate faster.
The various football bodies at the UK, European and global levels,
all impose various sanctions, fines and bans
to combat online abuse and anti-social behaviour at matches.
Football remains the world game and a universal medium
that cuts across country, culture and language.
Its inherent ability to break down barriers
rather than erect them remains.
It's that message, advocates say, which must carry the day.
AMJID: The world is going through a reckoning of where polarisation
and xenophobia need to be tackled head-on,
and football has the power to deliver anti-racism message
and anti-hate message which, for me,
no other sport or no other medium at this time can do.
IFSHAAN: We need to engage more with the community
and not just with the fans in the terraces.
Try to get people in power at each level through the game.
I think that's the only way that it can be saved.
DARREN: Next week on Dateline, we meet the digital crusaders
trying to catch and stop India's call centre scammers.
And find more Dateline streaming on SBS On Demand.