«Italian racist referees». The study from England – breaking latest news

The referees of A league they give more yellow and red cards to darker-skinned players than to their fair-skinned teammates. According to two researchers, Beatrice Magistro e Morgan Wackwho collected data from each league match between 2009 and 2021 for their article published in the journal Sociology from the British Sociological Association. Going into more detail, it was noted that from 2009 to 2019 match officials whistled 20% more times per season against dark-colored playersas well as waving in front of their eyes 11% more yellow cards and 16% more red cards. Another observation is surprising: during the toughest months of Covid, that is when we played in empty stadiums, all this data decayed.

An innovative study

Beatrice Magistro and Morgan Wack, in their research, analyzed the data of FootyStats, WhoScored e FBref on tackles, fouls and cards. While to define the skin color of the athletes they used the 20 different shades with which the players are cataloged in the video game Football Manager, extremely cutting-edge simulator and also used by professional clubs. A study that certainly represents a novelty, since many European countries collect very little data on the matter, thus making it difficult to test the level of racism in football: «In many studies they have been based on considerably imperfect categorizations, such as the country of origin. Or they classify all Europeans as white and South Americans as non-white, which is problematic,” explained al Guardian Morgan Wack himself.

Because players may be more likely to foul depending on their position on the field, playing time, number of tackles they make, and the country where they grew up playing football, the researchers used regression analysis to eliminate these factors. Dat here it came out that lighter-skinned players fouled an average of 21 times in a season compared to 25 for darker-skinned players, who received an average of 3.9 yellow cards and 0.22 red cards per year compared to 3.5 yellow cards and 0.19 red cards for white colleagues.

It affects the behavior of the fans

Beatrice Magistro and Morgan Wack also intend to investigate the other top European championships. From the Liga Of viniciuswho has been the victim of five incidents of racism this season, to England by Neil Etheridge — Birmingham goalkeeper — who suffered a similar fate during the FA Cup match against Blackburn last month. Thinking about society is a crucial point of this research, which demonstrates how racist chants and howls from fans can influence referees, which is why during Covid and therefore with the stadiums closed, the data collected indicate that there is no substantial difference in the treatment reserved for football players. The researchers did not have data on home and away matches, so they chose to analyze the 2020-21 season, when fans could not take a seat in the stands due to restrictions due to the pandemic: «We also found that skinned footballers darker play less aggressively, perhaps knowing they are more likely to receive penalties.

Same thing in the NBA, then everything changed

Not just the referees. According to the two researchers it is very likely that racist bias influenced match results and salary negotiations for players. The Italian office against racial discrimination (UNAR) has set up a national observatory against discrimination in sport, according to which 211 cases of racism have been detected in Italian amateur and professional sport in the last year. Magistro said similar research was also done on the NBA by the scholars of the Brookings Institute, a think tank based in Washington: «And they noticed exactly the same thing. Then, after publicizing it all, they did some tests years later and found that the effect had disappeared. Making it public therefore helped to make the process fairer. Perhaps the same thing will also happen with the Italian referees».