“Fucking Moor.” “Ore”. These are some of the attacks that some spewed on social media on September 22nd. That night, an 18-year-old Spanish man was competing to win the Ballon d’Or. Lamine Yamal was in Paris, dressed in Dolce&Gabbana, accompanied by the whole family, happy, ambitious. The award went to the other favorite, Ousmane Dembélé. But the boy once again won the Kopa Trophy for best football player under 21. And it generated as much conversation as the French. Forever. And for worse. Because in his case, his family’s humble origins and his parents’ countries of origin – she is from Equatorial Guinea, he from Morocco – weigh on the way he is perceived and treated by some of his compatriots. Or, at least, those that express themselves on social media. His goals, his celebrations or his noisy publications, together with his undeniable success as one of the best football players of the moment, arouse the hatred of those who consider him different because of his origins and his skin color. And he’s not the only one. The same happens with Madrid player Vinicius Jr. or Athletic players Iñaki and Nico Williams, who have repeatedly denounced the racist attacks they receive in Spain.
It’s not a tantrum, not an opinion, not a perception. It’s evidence. Not only because of the screams that they often hear in the stadiums, but also because of several complaints that ended up in the courts and with the expulsion of some fans from the stadiums. This is evidence collected thanks to the work of the Spanish Observatory of Racism and Xenophobia (Oberaxe), which has been working for years to prevent hate speech in sports. This Observatory is fundamental in the agreement signed between the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration and LaLiga, from which a first devastating report emerged. Thanks to the so-called FARO system, which applies artificial intelligence to the Oberaxe methodology, we know that in the last season of the football competition in Spain, 33,438 reportable contents were detected, of which the different platforms managed to eliminate 33% of the total. Facebook is one of those that reacted the most and best by removing 62% of reported content; X only did this with 10%.
This is explained in a report to which EL PAÍS had access and which highlights that the monitored hate speech is mainly directed at football players, highlighting especially Lamine Yamal (target of 60% of attacks and insults) and Vinicius (with 29%), who receive a significant proportion of insults. To a lesser extent, other players such as Mbappé, Balde, Brahim Díaz or Iñaki Williams are also objects of hate, due to their biological characteristics and the stereotypes associated with them. “This fact shows how the sports field can reflect and reproduce dynamics of discrimination, also linked to religion and the social construction of cultural identities”, indicates the document. “When the political struggle and parties make immigration one of their main themes, the political discourse ends up penetrating other scenarios, such as football”, argues Javier Gomá, Spanish philosopher, writer and essayist, director of the Juan March Foundation.
When analyzing hate speech based on the football team, it is observed that Real Madrid (34%) and FC Barcelona (32%) together concentrate more than 65% of the negative messages directed at football players. This is followed by teams such as Real Valladolid (17%), Valencia (8%), Athletic Club (6%), Real Sociedad (5%) and Atlético de Madrid. “This distribution reflects not only the popularity and visibility of these clubs, but also how sporting rivalry can be interconnected with discriminatory expressions”, explains the Oberaxe team of researchers in this report.
In fact, as data collected during the last season warns, the evolution of hate speech in football “presents significant peaks on dates linked to sporting events of high competitive relevance, namely, on the 27th and 28th of October 2024, 3,675 and 2,855 messages were recorded respectively, coinciding with the first classic of the season between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona”. This high-profile event, the document continues, “amplified expressions of hatred, directed mainly at football players Lamine Yamal, Raphinha and Ansu Fati, who were the target of racial and xenophobic attacks. Among the examples detected are derogatory nicknames such as “Monicius”, in reference to Real Madrid’s Brazilian striker, and discriminatory comments towards Lamine Yamal. As an example, this comment: “No matter how much he plays for Spain, he will continue to be a ‘Moor’ throughout the life.” Because, as Gomá highlights, the fact that Yamal is Spanish ends up being a reality that many expressly ignore. Those who insult him do not admit him as one of their own because “manifestations of hatred do not like precision or truth; they seek the group’s applause in this public liberation.”
The report also highlights how networks reacted to the public expression of some football players regarding the celebration of Ramadan. “This phenomenon caused a notable polarization on social media, where speeches full of xenophobia and racism emerged, including insults that dehumanize players with terms such as ‘pig’, accusations of being ‘unpatriotic’ and attacks directed at Muslims, such as ‘all the Moors with their religion get out of here’”.
“There were territories in which we left a certain impunity and it is important to be self-critical. Perhaps sometimes we were indifferent to some messages we heard. There should never be room for an insult, much less for an insult that dehumanizes; not even in sport”, reflected the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz, a few weeks ago, during her speech at the World Football Summit, held in Madrid.
We know how Vinicius feels about the racist expressions he notices in Spain, when he publicly denounced them in a large press conference after the unpleasant episode he experienced at the Mestalla in 2023, when some fans shouted “monkey” at him from the stands. “A beautiful nation, which welcomed me and which I love, but which agreed to export the image of a racist country to the world. I regret the Spaniards who don’t agree, but today, in Brazil, Spain is known as a country of racists”, he said then. Lamine Yamal, on the other hand, did not make many references, although he was clear in an interview with José Ramón de la Morena: “Have you ever seen a black person call someone white on the street? No, because we have half a brain”, replied the Barça player.
His entourage recognizes, in a conversation with EL PAÍS, that the racist comments do not worry the boy. Hate speech is probably so normalized that, they explain, he even makes jokes about himself. He also knows how to focus on what is important, what to see and read and what not to pay attention to, although in general it bothers him to feel like he is in every sauce: “He gets exhausted seeing himself everywhere, it stresses him out, but not racism, he never victimizes himself; on the contrary, he responds: ‘I speak on the pitch’, say those close to him. Movistar +, said that “if it doesn’t go well (in football), it ends up at the traffic lights”. The father burst into tears and ended up calling Joan Laporta, president of Barcelona, to ask for an official reaction from the club; The mother demanded a statement from the player’s press office that same night. However, the next day, the football player excused Mono Burgos: “He wanted to flatter me, although he couldn’t find the words,” he told them.
According to monitoring data, people from North Africa and Muslims are the main recipients of these messages, representing 42.38% and 41.18% of hate speech, respectively. Next are Africans and people of African descent (14.57%) and unaccompanied foreign minors (10.50%), which highlights a marked ethnic-racial dimension in the discourse.
“Black kid” and the height of insults surrounding the classic
As the report conveniently explains, all these expressions “reflect persistent prejudices and stigmatization based on their ethnic and cultural origin, which transcend the sporting field”. The way in which people insult people is also significant for understanding hate speech: 97% of messages use aggressive and explicit language, based mainly on insults and direct disqualifications. Among the most frequent expressions are “shit” (21.81%), “whore” (15.69%) and “black” (8.37%). The detected expressions directed at players reproduce stereotypes, as in phrases such as: “Damn black man, die” or “Filthy Moor”. This content, says Oberaxe, “does not only affect individual players, but also projects prejudices onto different target groups, such as people from North Africa, Muslims, Africans or foreign minors”.
For example, some of the monitored content: “Nico and Vinicius are monkeys and Lamine is a Moor”, “Iñaki Williams’ shitty black man” or “los conguitos de España”. Likewise, in 22% of cases, the messages indicate that the players in question constitute a threat to citizens, legitimizing their exclusion. Examples such as “he’s a shit moor” or “they should break his legs”, specifically addressed to Lamine Yamal in that classic in October last year, right after scoring in the 77th minute of the game; also a “they should expel him from Spain as he came, on a boat”, which they dedicated to the young footballer after assisting Raphinha in the goal in the 84th minute that ended up condemning the game in favor of the Blaugrana (0-4), reflect how the content not only insults, but incites hatred, violence and expulsion. Javier Gomá argues that “minorities have never been so protected and the fact that we feel rejection in the face of these insults is a moral progress of our time”.
All this data, concludes the report, “demonstrates the need to promote a culture based on the principle of non-discrimination, through respect and coexistence, on and off the field”. LaLiga and the Ministry started working. But there is much work to be done to ban hate speech from football.
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