Did ‘racism’ win on penalties?

An ‘anti-racist’ mural of Marcus Rashford in Manchester was mobbed by gestures of wokeist support after ‘racist’ social media criticism of his missed penalty.

According to the football authorities and mainstream political leaders, ‘racism’ (especially on social media) is yet again the big story of the week, this time because of a few football fans’ reactions to England’s defeat on penalties in Sunday night’s final of the European Championship.

After weeks of intense wokeness led by England manager Gareth Southgate – who seems to believe that the talents of a few black footballers have resolved the entire debate about the merits or demerits of the multiracial society – the penalty shootout between England and Italy proved to be the wokeist’s worst nightmare.

Of the five English penalty takers, two White players scored while three black players failed.

It would be cruel as well as foolish to make too much of this, especially as one of the Blacks is only 19 years old.

Yet consider what would have been the universal media and political reaction had it been the other way round, or simply had a black footballer scored the decisive penalty winning the game for England, rather than missing the decisive penalty sealing our defeat.

Every other aspect of the match would have been a minor issue: the heroism of the black goalscorer would have been the front-page lead, and we would all have been treated to endless analysis of how this ‘English’ triumph had redefined our new, ‘diverse’, ‘vibrant’ nation.

The three players who missed for England: Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Bukayo Saka

These plaudits would have been just as exaggerated as the brickbats presently cast on social media, yet the former would have been the accepted (indeed compulsory) reaction to victory, while the latter is now being criminalised and indeed made the excuse for new crackdowns on the entire social media world.

And no one seems to be asking the only relevant question in footballing terms: did Gareth Southgate allow his wokeness to affect his managerial judgment? Not only did he choose three blacks among the five penalty takers (including 19-year-old Bukayo Saka, son of Nigerian immigrants), he actually brought two of these three onto the field during the final minutes of the match when they could make no positive difference in open play, with the sole intention of their taking penalties.

Afterwards Southgate insisted his choice had been based on how the players performed in training. Yet everyone knows that taking a penalty under pressure is completely different to taking one in training: indeed scoring from a penalty is not an extraordinary feat of footballing skill. Most schoolboy footballers would manage it most of the time in training. The knack is to to perform under pressure.

And you don’t have to be any sort of ‘racist’ to recognise that while Africans and Afro-Caribbeans might have many merits, performing well under pressure is not (on average) among them.

Who but an inveterate wokeist, when asked to guess the ideal type of man to score a penalty in front of an expectant crowd at the end of the final of the world’s second-most important football tournament, would answer: “a 19-year-old ethnic Nigerian”?

It’s no doubt ‘racist’ of us even to discuss such questions. Football personalities well outside the England set-up are now crying ‘racism’ whenever they wish to avoid embarrassing scrutiny.

Controversial Oldham Athletic owner Abdallah Lemsagam

No one in Oldham was surprised, for example, when yesterday the unpopular chairman of Oldham Athletic – Abdallah Lemsagam – who has been under pressure to resign from many fans, former players and staff – accused unnamed fans of ‘racially abusing’ him and his brother at a recent pre-season friendly.

He no doubt hopes that everything else about his running of the club will pale into insignificance next to an isolated alleged instance of ‘racism’.

How much longer will this craziness continue? Will ‘taking the knee’ be compulsory at every football match in England this season? And why stop there? Should we not insist that schoolchildren ‘take the knee’ at the start of every school day, much as in a bygone era they might once have said a prayer?

So far it appears that Gareth Southgate and his team have succeeded where Meghan Markle failed: institutionalising ‘anti-racism’ by the simple expedient of missing three penalties.

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