Culture

Black footballers played better without fans

Researchers compared performances before and after Covid lockdowns closed stadiums, and found that Black players played better without crowds
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In November 2019, Italian footballer Mario Balotelli was playing in a Serie A game for Brescia against Verona – tussling for possession near the corner flag – when he heard monkey noises coming from the crowd. Balotelli, who is of Ghanaian descent, kicked the ball into the stands and threatened to walk off the pitch in one of the most high-profile cases of a player taking immediate action against racist abuse in the stadium.

Eventually, he was persuaded to continue, and scored a stunning 85th minute consolation goal, but the abuse was the latest in a string of unacceptable incidents at football grounds across Europe throughout 2019. In March, Chelsea complained to UEFA after forward Callum Hudson-Odoi was abused during a Europa League game in Kiev. In October, England’s Euro 2020 qualifier in Bulgaria had to be stopped twice because of racism by home fans. In April, a French Ligue 1 game was suspended for several minutes due to hateful chanting directed at Amiens defender Prince Gouano. Then, in March 2020, the abuse suddenly stopped.

The pandemic emptied stadiums. When football returned, viewers had to adjust to the eerie sound of fake crowd noise, the shouts of managers echoing around vacant amphitheatres. Watching these games on TV, Paolo Falco – an economics professor at the University of Copenhagen – began to wonder what impact the absence of crowds was having on the players, and specifically how it might be affecting those most subject to abuse from the stands.

Working with colleagues Mauro Caselli and Gianpiero Mattera, he compared performances of players of African origin playing in Italy’s top division before and after fans were barred from stadia. The raw data came from a publicly available algorithm normally used for fantasy football, that combines data on goals, passes, assists, distance run and other metrics.

When they crunched the numbers, the researchers found that Black players showed a three per cent improvement in performance between the first half of the 2019-20 season which was played with full attendances, and the delayed final months, completed without crowds. There was no difference for players from other ethnic groups. “The soundness of this comes from the fact that we observed exactly the same players before and after,” Falco says.

Of course, there are other factors potentially at play here – a three per cent improvement is not unexpected for an individual player during a season, but only the Black players showed it; another season in a foreign country means players are more settled, but the effect disappeared for those who had arrived in Serie A from other European countries. The effect persists even when controlling for weather conditions, with the additional games played in the hotter summer months. 

Falco and his collaborators also found that performances improved the most among players whose teams had been subject to documented instances of racist abuse prior to lockdown. The sample size is small, but the results are significant. Falco says you’d struggle to come up with a simpler explanation for the increase than the sudden absence of racist abuse.

It could be that this is a particular problem in Italy – there were more than 600 incidents in a six year period, according to data from the Italian Footballers’ Association. In the UK, instances of racial abuse actually happening inside a stadium are relatively rare, so it’s possible that the effect would be less apparent in other leagues. 

There’s no doubt racism affects players in the moment – you could tell from Balotelli’s reaction against Verona how upset he was at the abuse. The former Crystal Palace manager Roy Hodgson has previously talked about how social media abuse before a game has impacted star player Wilfried Zaha. Former Brighton player Liam Rosenior has also spoken about being racially abused by another player during a reserve game and getting sent off when he retaliated. But it wasn’t the abuse that upset him the most – it was the lack of action from the referee.

But abuse also has a lasting, insidious effect beyond the initial moment. As we saw from the Euro 2020 final, Black players can sadly expect to get abuse from the crowd or on social media if they make a mistake, or miss a penalty. “I knew instantly the kind of hate that I was about to receive,” wrote England player Bukayo Saka after the game. Falco suggests that this ‘anticipation effect’ might be one explanation for the results, even if there aren't racist incidents in every game.

Obviously, racism is abhorrent and should be kicked out of football for its own sake. But money is often the best way to effect real change – and as an economist Falco puts a business spin on it. “The African players do not play better at the cost of someone else playing worse,” he says. “This tells us that the negative impact of racism is a net cost for the game as a whole – because there isn’t any other group that plays worse, the game as a whole got better after Covid.”

This isn’t to diminish the human cost of racial abuse, but to try and speak to football authorities in the only language they understand. “Football is based on the idea that fans all over the world like watching extraordinary people doing extraordinary things, and without that the whole industry suffers,” Falco says. “This is not just a moral, ethical issue – it’s an issue of economics and money, that’s what hopefully will make people do something about it.”

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This article was originally published by WIRED UK