At Least England’s Footballers Lead by Example in the Face of Racism

Bulgarian fans clustered together, many dressed in black, made monkey chants and gave Nazi salutes. Photograph: Nikolay Doychinov/AFP via Getty Images
Bulgarian fans clustered together, many dressed in black, made monkey chants and gave Nazi salutes. Photograph: Nikolay Doychinov/AFP via Getty Images
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At Least England’s Footballers Lead by Example in the Face of Racism

Bulgarian fans clustered together, many dressed in black, made monkey chants and gave Nazi salutes. Photograph: Nikolay Doychinov/AFP via Getty Images
Bulgarian fans clustered together, many dressed in black, made monkey chants and gave Nazi salutes. Photograph: Nikolay Doychinov/AFP via Getty Images

If you want to feel good about Britain right now, or at least England, where do you look? Not to our parliament, in the latter stages of its descent into something close to chaos, the green spaces around the Palace of Westminster slowly being churned into mud by ceaseless protests. And there is little comfort to be had turning to our prime minister, a man so renowned for dishonesty that the likelihood that he will break his word is baked into the political calculations of his opponents.

Across the world, our reputation as a serious-minded, pragmatic (even perfidious) nation is in tatters and our former sense of ourselves as a reasonable, level-headed, no-nonsense people is difficult to sustain after the past three and half years of political turmoil.

One place we could look last week for signs of the seriousness and professionalism for which we were once known was a stadium in Bulgaria. There, a group of twentysomething players and their manager stood huddled together, under the floodlights, facing what their manager later described as an “impossible situation”.

If you want leadership, it was there in abundance. Not just in the calm thoughtfulness of Gareth Southgate, but in Tyrone Mings, the 26-year-old whose England debut came on the night he and his teammates were subjected to torrents of racist abuse.

It came from sections of the Bulgarian fans who, clustered together – many dressed in black, their faces half concealed by hoods – made monkey chants and gave Nazi salutes. Despite the grimness of it all, despite the two stoppages in the first half and the sheer awful predictability of it all, Mings and his teammates went on to defeat Bulgaria 6-0 and navigate the impossibility of the night.

That the England team represents the best of the nation shows not just how much they have risen under Southgate’s management, but how much the England they represent has fallen. For decades, we were regarded as a consistent and reliable nation with an inconsistent and unreliable football team. Now the opposite is true.

Many commentators wrote of how England’s players had shown “dignity”, played through their torment and “let their feet do the talking”. But it is not the job of England’s players to lead by example in the face of racist abuse. The job of stamping out racism in European football falls to Uefa, an institution that had almost as bad a night as the Bulgarian Football Union (BFU).

Uefa’s three-step protocol for dealing with racism from supporters, although followed by the England players and officials, was shown in Sofia to be deeply flawed. The first step is for the team subjected to abuse to report it to the referee, who then arranges for a stadium announcement to be made requesting that the chanting stop.

The illogicality and seemingly wilful naivety of that part of the protocol was highlighted by the sports psychologist Dr Peter Olusoga (he’s my younger brother), who questioned whether “politely asking racist thugs if perhaps they might consider not being racist, you know, if it’s not too much trouble” is a flawed approach. “Imagine in any other job hearing, ‘Yeah, so I know that racists are screaming at you while you’re trying to work, but are you OK to keep working?’”

Yet the overt racism that echoed around the stadium is only part of the story. This was also about structural racism: forms of prejudice in which black people are told that their own lived experiences are merely interpretations or opinions. Mings told an interviewer that the racist chants had begun during the warm-up, before kick-off. Yet even after the match, the Bulgaria manager, Krasimir Balakov, claimed that he “didn’t hear anything”. Worse, he demanded that before any action is taken the racism that England’s players had suffered had to be “proved to be true”.

Balakov was not just being disingenuous, he was gaslighting England’s black players, calling their honesty and professionalism into question, defending the indefensible, minimizing what had happened and helping to drag football into the post-truth era.

Balakov’s resignation on Friday, which followed that of the president of the BFU, Borislav Mikhailov, might be taken as signs that last week’s events have finally stunned the Bulgarians into action. Yet what happened on Monday was both predictable and widely predicted. There had been racist chanting directed against England players in the same stadium eight years ago during a European Championship qualifier. Any football authority serious about combating racism would have taken action before the match, not after.

On Tuesday, Boris Johnson condemned on Twitter what he called the “vile racism we saw and heard last night”, saying it had “no place in football or anywhere else”. But this support arrives from a prime minister who, in 2002, when many of England’s black players were infants, described black children as “piccaninnies”, the same term Enoch Powell deployed in his “rivers of blood” speech.

The contrast between the leadership displayed by the England team and the lack of leadership in politics was further demonstrated during the post-match press conference. There, the England manager could have done the easy thing – condemned the Bulgarian fans and then soaked up the glory of a victory achieved under the most difficult of conditions. Southgate instead showed what leadership looks like. Diverting the attention away from himself and on to his players (as he consistently does), he took the path of most resistance, and invited the English game to look at itself in the mirror. “Sadly, my players, because of their experiences in our own country, are hardened to racism,” he said. “I don’t know what that says about our society, but that’s the reality.”

(The Guardian)



Swiatek and Rybakina Serve up Bagels en Route to Victories at Indian Wells 

Iga Swiatek of Poland plays a backhand in her match against Dayana Yastremska of Ukraine at Indian Wells Tennis Garden on March 09, 2025 in Indian Wells, California. (Getty Images/AFP)
Iga Swiatek of Poland plays a backhand in her match against Dayana Yastremska of Ukraine at Indian Wells Tennis Garden on March 09, 2025 in Indian Wells, California. (Getty Images/AFP)
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Swiatek and Rybakina Serve up Bagels en Route to Victories at Indian Wells 

Iga Swiatek of Poland plays a backhand in her match against Dayana Yastremska of Ukraine at Indian Wells Tennis Garden on March 09, 2025 in Indian Wells, California. (Getty Images/AFP)
Iga Swiatek of Poland plays a backhand in her match against Dayana Yastremska of Ukraine at Indian Wells Tennis Garden on March 09, 2025 in Indian Wells, California. (Getty Images/AFP)

Defending champion Iga Swiatek crushed Dayana Yastremska 6-0 6-2 and 2023 champion Elena Rybakina powered past Britain's Katie Boulter 6-0 7-5 to reach the fourth round of Indian Wells on Sunday with displays of dominance.

Swiatek, seeded second, is aiming to become the first woman to win the tournament three times and the Polish player looked eager to do so in as little time on court as possible, reeling off 10 games in a row and needing just 65 minutes to see off her Ukrainian opponent.

"At the end I got a bit tired, it's always hard to finish a match like that but I'm happy that I kept my intensity up in the last game to close it," she said.

"I had control from the beginning so I'm happy with the performance for sure."

It was Swiatek's second bagel set of the tournament after she overwhelmed Caroline Garcia 6-2 6-0 in her first match.

The five-times major champion has not won a title since her triumph at Roland Garros in 2024, her longest drought since winning her first major title in 2020.

She served a one-month suspension in October for a failed drug test and has seen Aryna Sabalenka take her world number one ranking but said the California desert is an ideal setting to get back to winning ways.

"It's amazing, I love coming here," she said.

"I already have my routine so it feels like home. It's for sure the place to be and a great place to play tennis."

Swiatek will face 15th seed Karolina Muchova in the round of 16 after the Czech player beat her compatriot Katerina Siniakova in the afternoon.

After cruising through the first set, Rybakina fell behind 5-3 in the second before regrouping.

She stretched to hit a sensational defensive shot in a game where she broke back for 5-5 and broke again on match point to seal the win.

Rybakina, who missed last year's tournament due to an illness, will play ninth-seeded teenager Mirra Andreeva in a rematch of their Dubai semi-final, which the Russian won in three sets en route to becoming the youngest player to win a WTA 1000 title.

Andreeva is coached by former Wimbledon champion Conchita Martinez, who the 17-year-old said was keeping her focused.

"She already told me that she booked a court at 12 p.m," she told reporters after her night match. "I see not much time passed from the match... she's just like this, but it's not bad."

Ukrainian Elina Svitolina upset 14th seed Danielle Collins 6-2 6-4 and will face another American, fourth seed Jessica Pegula in the next round after she breezed past China's Wang Xinyu 6-2 6-1.

Svitolina's countrywoman Marta Kostyuk beat American wildcard Caroline Dolehide 6-3 6-3.

MEDVEDEV, TSITSIPAS ADVANCE

On the men's side, Stefanos Tsitsipas showed off his impressive athleticism and defense, leaping for overheads and speeding around the court to beat Italy's Matteo Berrettini 6-3 6-3.

"I'm approaching these matches with determination and willingness to just leave it all out there on the court," Tsitsipas said.

"I want to get out there on the court and be a gladiator, and that's how I approach every single match I get to play."

The Greek eighth seed will face battle-tested Holger Rune after the Danish player dug deep to outlast Frenchman Ugo Humbert 5-7 6-4 7-5 with the backing of the crowd on center court.

"I tried to be brave," Rune said of his play over the final two games of the match.

"The energy on this court was truly amazing."

Daniil Medvedev was on court for just 10 minutes before his American opponent Alex Michelsen was forced to retire due to illness after two games.

The Russian fifth seed has lost to Carlos Alcaraz in the Indian Wells final the past two years, and the Spaniard is once again on the opposite side of the draw.

Medvedev will next face popular American Tommy Paul, who notched his 50th win at a Masters 1000 tournament with a 6-3 7-5 victory over Britain's Cameron Norrie.

Unheralded Japanese player Yosuke Watanuki was all smiles while upsetting American Frances Tiafoe 6-4 7-6(6) to notch the biggest win of his career.

"I tried to enjoy today," said Watanuki, who is ranked world number 349. "Even though I missed a terrible backhand, it is Indian Wells, center court. So even though I missed, I was happy,"

Tallon Griekspoor toppled 29th-seeded Frenchman Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard on Sunday after stunning top seed Alexander Zverev in the previous round.

Griekspoor pounded 10 aces and broke Mpetshi Perricard's mighty serve twice en route to the win.

Southern California native Marcos Giron came from behind to beat Alexei Popyrin 5-7 6-3 6-3 in a match where the struggling Australian converted just one of his 15 break point chances.

It is the 31-year-old Giron's first time reaching the fourth round of the tournament.