An unequal game? Football, race and education ft. Paul Campbell

It is often said that football reflects the societies where we live. So what does football tell us about race and education? In this episode co-hosts Guy and Francesco learn the difficulties that young black footballers faced in their education as they tried to make it in the game from Leicester University's Paul Campbell. Paul also provides insight into the different media representations of black footballers, including in video games, as well as the particular challenges that black footballers face when they try to transition away from the game at the end of their careers. Throughout Paul highlights ways that clubs and the state can and should respond. 

Please note that in explaining how black and white footballers are represented, Paul points to some of the offensive ways this has been done regarding black footballers.

Transcript

An unequal game? Football, race and education ft. Paul Campbell

Francesco Belcastro 00:20

Hello, and welcome to a new episode of FootPol, the podcast where football meets politics. I'm your co -host, Dr. Francesco Belcastro, and here with me is my other co -host, Dr Guy Burton. 

Guy Burton 00:30

Hi, how are you doing, Francesco? 

Francesco Belcastro 00:32

I'm fine, Guy, how are you? 

Guy Burton 00:34

Not bad today, thanks. So what are we talking about today? 

Francesco Belcastro 00:38

So today we're talking about a very important topic, the politics of football, race and education. I think that's a good title for the episode. 

Francesco Belcastro 00:48

We've got an excellent speaker, you know who our guest is today, Guy?

Guy Burton 00:52

Paul Campbell, I believe. 

Francesco Belcastro 00:53

Exactly. Our guest today is Professor Paul Campbell. Now, Paul is an assistant professor in the sociology of race and inclusion at the University of Leicester here in the UK. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:03

He's an interdisciplinary scholar of race and inclusion, primarily working in two areas, education and sport. And I'd say his work is particularly interesting because it's very much an intersection of sociology, history, education and sport. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:16

So it speaks to all of these discipline and strong commitment to equality, diversity and social justice, which is something on the podcast we are committed to and we are really keen to engage with. His recent work on race and football includes his monograph on education, retirement and career transition for black ex -professional footballers, but is also published widely in terms of articles and chapters in edited volumes on these different areas. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:45

Paul, welcome. Thank you very much for joining us. 

Paul Campbell 01:48

Hi, Francesco. Hi, Guy. How are you? 

Guy Burton 01:51

Well, good. Thank you for taking the time to to come and speak to us. We really appreciate it. 

Paul Campbell 01:57

Thank you for inviting me. 

Guy Burton 02:00

Well, great. Listen, before we start, we always like to ask our guests whether they have a football team that they follow. 

Paul Campbell 02:06

Yeah, I follow Tottenham, which has been an interesting journey over the last 30 odd years. 

Paul Campbell 02:16

But we seem to be having a bit of a, hopefully, the start of a golden period under Ange, our new manager. 

Guy Burton 02:25

Yeah, I hope that works for you, because my father's been following them for 60 years. It's been on a downward trajectory ever since! So, you know, here's to both of you!

Francesco Belcastro 02:34

That's a pessimistic note, Guy! 

Guy Burton 02:38

I like teasing him! 

Paul Campbell 02:41

Although I did meet Thierry Henry the other day. And I think I'm the only - I'll call myself a Tottenham full back to ever get that close to him! 

Francesco Belcastro 02:55

Fair enough! 

Guy Burton 02:58

Excellent! 

Francesco Belcastro 02:58

It's great!

Guy Burton 02:59

So anyway, listen: Francesco, let's get started, shall we? 

Francesco Belcastro 03:02

Yeah. Your work has covered different areas of the relationship between sport, race and education. Could you start by telling us a bit how these are connected in your work and more in general, sport, race and education? 

Paul Campbell 03:14

Yeah, sure. So I think, as you've indicated, my work covers in real kind of broad breadth. So I suppose the most straightforward example of the kind of ways in which education is, the relationship between sport, race and education plays out is in my book, From Stacking Shelves... From Signing Autographs to Stacking Shelves. 

Paul Campbell 03:43

So just some context about it. So basically what the study was interested in was really born out of the fact that much of the issues of retirement for ex -players had been explored from a psychological perspective. 

Paul Campbell 03:56

But this perspective kind of individualizes the issues that they were facing, things like any issues with connected things like having an addictive personality. So I wanted to look at the ways in which the kind of culture of football contributed to the kinds of issues that they were facing and experiencing post -playing. 

Paul Campbell 04:17

So what this study did really was it traced the history of a number of black players who played between 1990 and 2010 to kind of understand these issues that they were facing in retirement, but importantly tried to, through their stories, understand how they were connected to their time within the football industry, and importantly, how these experiences were complicated or enhanced or exaggerated by race, how they were complicated by race. 

Paul Campbell 04:55

So really then the most clearest place to see the relationship of education and sport was in their time and their stories as school boys on their journey into the football clubs. And so what we saw really was that kind of educational, historically education, compulsory education has been a space that has been large, that has been traced by sociologists for the last sort of five, six decades. 

Paul Campbell 05:26

So that's been historically hostile for working class young men. And that actually, not only is it kind of, it's a space that's actually hostile. So not only is it inaccessible, but a place where they kind of experience psychological violence, exclusion, mistreatment, and so forth. 

Paul Campbell 05:51

But importantly, this lack of accessibility is even more pronounced for young men of colour. And so during this time, the overall majority of participants were not only black, but they were working class, they were experiencing education, although these barriers in education from a very kind of acute... through the experience of being both race and of working classes. 

Paul Campbell 06:21

So what we see is that education is hostile to them, and that they receive mistreatment from staff, they are often placed in sex well below their educational ability, they face higher rates of exclusion, they face racial stereotypes about their proclivity for being involved in bad behaviour and so forth and so forth. 

Paul Campbell 06:51

And even their parents, and while their parents recognise the importance of education, they also were very aware of education as being a dangerous space for young black men. So this kind of negative experience in school, also the other thing that was happening is that teachers would often direct them to sporting activities. 

Paul Campbell 07:17

So in school, the only space where often they would get positive affirmation was either track and field football or rugby. So we see this kind of really kind of anti -education experience, really kind of acutely experienced by many of these young black men at the time or black schoolboys at the time. 

Paul Campbell 07:38

Conversely, then we see that sport is this welcoming space where not only do they receive positive affirmation, but actually they're celebrated, their black bodies are seen as valuable, they're seen as naturally being good at sport and that that's kind of where they should kind of of direct their energies and that their teachers are enthused by them. 

Paul Campbell 08:03

So many of them spoke of kind of PE as being this one space in education where they have this positive experience. Then they find themselves in football academies or kind of football schools of excellence, where they are experiencing the converse experience of education. 

Paul Campbell 08:28

They are, again, experiencing positive affirmation. They are succeeding. They are being successful. So in many ways, football then becomes for them not only a safe space, but a safer route for success when compared to contrast with what education offers. 

Paul Campbell 08:48

Within kind of the professional football industry, this idea of desire among young players is a highly prized attribute. And through this concept of desire, players are to show the right desire to be professionals, they need to show that they're willing to sacrifice all else to become a football professional. 

Paul Campbell 09:13

So that often means they're friends, often we'll have footballers talking about kind of sacrificing, doing what other teenagers are doing, going out, enjoying themselves, having partners, so forth and so forth. 

Paul Campbell 09:27

But included within sacrifice is also education. Players are expected to prize football over everything else, including their studies. So what we found was when the players were talking about their stories, they often said that actually, if you missed training, or if you chose education, if they were short on education, if they were having to do catch up on coursework, or do homework, they were often labeled as their coaches as not demonstrating the required levels of desire to make it as a football professional. 

Paul Campbell 10:10

So what this then means is that players are faced with this very kind of clear choice that actually to show the desire that actually they need to sacrifice, including education. Importantly, white coaches also subscribe to many of the racial stereotypes held about young black men as being either kind of not interested in education, not suited to education, or being deviant in education. 

Paul Campbell 10:38

So whenever a black player or that would say to their coach, whenever they would ask their coaches maybe to miss the odd night of training for to catch up on studies, not only was this frowned upon, but they were disbelieved. 

Paul Campbell 10:54

So there was this real kind of interesting experiencing experience of multiple processes taking them away from their study that were coming from the expectations of their coaches and of the football culture. 

Guy Burton 11:14

Can I ask about that? Because presumably there are some policy prescriptions that follow on from that. I mean, in terms of thinking about, well, how do we overcome those challenges and those sentiments and those attitudes? I mean, have you got some thoughts about that as to how you counter this? 

Paul Campbell 11:35

For sure. Well, it's interesting. So I've got a current PhD student, Niall Sims, who's looking at the experience of parents of schoolboy footballers today. 

Paul Campbell 11:49

And what we see is that this process or this this experience has changed somewhat. Now professional football clubs will often provide personal tutors for the most talented of players in a particular group to enable them to catch up. S0 in many ways playing football actually for working class families and working class young boys actually gives them access to a level of private education that they wouldn't get in state education. 

Paul Campbell 12:29

But one of the things that we might need to think about is providing a a pre care package so that when families are approached. When a player's family is approached for that player to sign for that club, that these families are aware of all of these kinds of opportunities now that are afforded or available to young soccer hopefuls, so that instead of 

Paul Campbell 13:06

it simply been a case that the most talented players - which it is usually - the most talented of young players get access to to private tutors that found that the young... that families of all players can say well actually if if my son is going to dedicate so much of his time to the pursuit of becoming a professional footballer, that actually in return, I want this level of educative support so that if they get released, then ultimately they they have a some sort of... that the club provides more of a duty of care. And even not just if they get released, but when they come out of 

Paul Campbell 13:50

the game after is for professionals that they have currency that they can take into the labour market, to access work at that juncture of their lives. 

Guy Burton 14:01

Okay. And speaking about change, because one of the, you know, historically, historically, as well, you know, black players in the media, in commentary magazines, for example, often sort of the characterization of players with an African background has been sort of the the emphasis on their physical attributes, as opposed to, you know, other dimensions, whether that's intelligence or tactical awareness. Do - I mean - what you've just been saying about sort of trying to change the way that the relationship between young, young working class and black men, black, black men with education, is being changed by football clubs, 

Guy Burton 14:33

do we also see that starting to change as well, this this sort of, you know, the shift away from thinking about players as primarily through a physical dimension to a more sort of intellectual one as well? 

Paul Campbell 14:47

I suppose that the shorthand answer is no. That we, we continually see the the idea of the kind of black sporting body as one that's hyper physical and intellectually limited is is extremely pervasive and ultimately as well it also manifests, not just in criticisms, but in praise. 

Paul Campbell 15:17

So, I think, I think really, so just to give a little bit of background, much of these stereotypes have a long history that exists and predate modern sport. Many of these many of these current ideas about kind of racialized bodies of having inherent attributes stem back to the Enlightenment, which is where the formation of kind of modern ideas of race or ideas of race as we recognize them first started to kind of emerge. 

Paul Campbell 15:50

And so, not only did it categorize different groups of people, it also placed them in a hierarchy and so crudely put what we see is white races are seen to be the most evolved and black races are seen to be the least evolved. 

Paul Campbell 16:10

And so, ultimate - and so sorry - white races are the most evolved, black race is the least evolved and closest to seen as the closest human species to animals. And, and so, ultimately, this wasn't just about physicality this was also about intellect. 

Paul Campbell 16:33

So, white races were seen to be the most kind of intellectual, spiritual, advanced in terms of character. And, but the, the kind of trade off that the science held that the trade off was that because races with most intellectually evolved, that meant that in terms of physical attributes, they had less need for them as a race. 

Paul Campbell 17:05

So we're not as physically as well endowed as black races, who were the least evolved. And thus, because they were in evolutionary times as close to animals, they still needed the physicality to compensate that lack of intellect. 

Paul Campbell 17:25

Now, while these these ideas were kind of outdated or kind of dismissed by the kind of 1900s, these have a real prevalence and durability. So what we see is this kind of idea of compensation really roots itself into a perception that black bodies are seen as naturally suited to physical labor, and also natural athletes, because they are naturally athletically endowed. 

Paul Campbell 18:04

So, and we see this, for example, this becomes really popular in much of the sport discourse. So we saw an athletics coach, famous athletics coach in the US, Dean Cromwell, who, when explaining Jesse Owens' performance at the Berlin Olympics, he famously wrote, it was, the reason why Jesse Owens did well was because it was not long ago that the African American athlete's ability to sprint and jump was a life and death matter to him in the jungle. 

Paul Campbell 18:43

So these ideas maintain, and what we see and what we found to bring it up to date is we find that these ideas are manifest among the ways in which current pundits, footballers, managers, ex -professionals still talk about black and white footballers, and they speak about them in these very kind of clear, different ways. 

Paul Campbell 19:15

So what we found was we did a study looking at football commentary at the 2018 World Cup. And here we found, I wanted to do something different. Often we think of this as kind of derogatory language, but I wanted to look at kind of the ways in which players were praised, how they were celebrated. 

Paul Campbell 19:39

So what we what we did was we looked at about 30 hours of football coverage which captured about 20 matches and captured about 19 of the 32 competing teams. And what that generated was 1009 praise comments logged. 

Paul Campbell 20:02

And we then tallied this against the praise given to black players and to white players. And so what we found was out of the 281 praise comments given to players who were visibly black, 69% of praise was about their physicality. 

Paul Campbell 20:23

Whereas 5% was given to character and 4% given to their cognitive attributes. Conversely of the 448 praise comments given to white players only 49% - oh sorry - 47% were to their learned attributes and 13% was to their character. 

Paul Campbell 20:48

11 was to their intellect, and only 18% was to their physicality. So what this kind of showed us was that it wasn't simply a case of commentators reporting objectively. Instead, what we see is, is that when players were doing the same thing, their raised bodies meant that commentators would overlook or zero in on certain ways of describing when they were performing the same act in a game. 

Paul Campbell 21:28

And I think that an example is probably useful. So when we contrasted, for example, when we contrast a key moment in a match with the Belgium striker Romelu Lukaku, who scored in the quarterfinal against Japan. 

Paul Campbell 21:46

So this was in towards the end of the match. Japan had a corner, Belgium broke, Kevin De Bruyne plays a short pass to the ,the wide player whose name escapes me. He runs down the length of the pitch, crosses the ball in, Lukaku runs into the finish, has a couple of Japanese defenders around him, and has the awareness of the player behind him. 

Paul Campbell 22:19

So he actually dummies the ball, lets it run through his legs, which takes out four players, and then presents the goal scorer with an open goal. So this moment actually required significant spatial awareness, intelligence, and kind of cognitive intellect from Lukaku to pull this manoeuvre off. 

Paul Campbell 22:43

However, at no point in the entire a phase of play was any praise given for Lukaku's intelligence there. And then when we contrast him with somebody like Harry Kane in the tournament, who's similarly a target man against 6 '2", and Harry Kane is very physical when he plays, he's a very strong footballer. 

Paul Campbell 23:13

When we looked at the kind of comments directed at Harry Kane, in fact, very few praise was given for his physicality despite, and returning to my point of being a Tottenham supporter, Harry Kane being a player that uses his physicality equally as much as his intelligence in a game. 

Paul Campbell 23:36

So this example really kind of shows the ways in which it's not simply about black players, just being more physical and white players being more intelligent and commentators reporting on this. What we see is, even when they're carrying out very similar activities on the pitch, their race bodies mean that what they do is interpreted in very different ways. 

Francesco Belcastro 24:03

Paul, can I ask you one thing? Sorry, can I jump in? 

Paul Campbell 24:06

Yeah, for sure, please. 

Francesco Belcastro 24:07

This, it seems to me that given football's popularity and how much the game matters to so many people, this is a relevance that goes beyond the game, right? 

Francesco Belcastro 24:18

It says something about society. And before you answer, could I just remind our listeners that we have an excellent episode with Ana Paula da Silva that we released in December that looks at race in the context of Brazil that has some very interesting comparison with what you were saying. 

Francesco Belcastro 24:34

So listeners who are enjoying these episodes should really check that out. Sorry, go ahead. 

Paul Campbell 24:38

No, completely. And interesting, that's quite a nice segue into some follow up work that we did, which looks at these ideas. 

Paul Campbell 24:49

Because one of the challenges is we often think as a society, well, how is it that these race ideas still maintain? We kind of live with the belief that each generation gets more and more inclusive or more and more kind of enlightened and that actually these ideas will in effect die out with previous generations. 

Paul Campbell 25:08

But we see that these things are continually reproduced and manifest within each generation. So we looked at, interestingly, football video games. And we even saw there that these racialized difference would manifest within at the very level of coding within football games. 

Paul Campbell 25:35

So we looked at, in this case, I won't say the name of the game just because In fairness to the game, because it's not just this one game where we see these patterns, but there's very famous football video game, which has a top 100 players each year that it produces. 

Paul Campbell 25:59

And within these top 100 players. These players are broken down into attributes. So basically, a footballer will have a score for speed for jumping for physical strength for aggression for passing for shooting for long shots for so forth and so forth, and each play and they are given a score out of from one to 99. 

Paul Campbell 26:29

And what we found was, was that when we looked at the aggregate scores for the black players within the top 100. That when it came to their physical attributes, they, on aggregate, outscored white players every time. 

Paul Campbell 26:50

So when it came to sprint speed, to jump into physical strength, to balance, to levels of aggression, they all outscored them. So for speed, black players scored an average of 79 .15, white players 71. 

Paul Campbell 27:06

The ability to jump, 78 for black players, 71 for white players. For physical strength, 76 for black players, 72 for white. But when it came to the attributes that the game itself classified as technical, we saw that reverse white players, white digital players, won out every time. 

Paul Campbell 27:27

So the ability to cross a ball, white players were kind of 72 .3% to 71, so it's not percent, but score to 71, for accuracy, for taking free kicks, for so forth. So basically what we saw was this was manifest within the game. 

Paul Campbell 27:53

Importantly, these codes, which was really the surprising hit, these codes were not just influencing the way that the players performed on the pitch, but through the technology of the controllers, it meant that these players felt different when you were controlling them. 

Paul Campbell 28:13

So young people were learning basically racialized difference, not through just what they were seeing on the screen, but through what they were feeling. It was a much more total socialization in the ideas of race. 

Paul Campbell 28:31

Now, to come back to the point about this as a broader impact. Well, yeah, for sure. One, in terms of sports. world it means that we often celebrate black footballers but at the same time we see them as less valuable because we praise them for their natural physicality but that also means that whenever we celebrate them we say well but it's not because they've done anything special it's just because they're naturally fast or they're naturally strong or they're naturally quick whereas when we celebrate for intellect and for technique then the celebration here is that this is somebody who has worked hard to master that particular attribute. 

Paul Campbell 29:19

The other thing more broadly is that this contributes to these wider ideas of black bodies, black people, black communities as being more physical, more aggressive and ultimately more dangerous and this leads to some of the stereotypes that we see consumed by people who work in in, for example, the police, whereby we see much more heavy -handed policing of young black men. 

Paul Campbell 29:49

We see it in schools where we see higher levels of exclusion of, again, young black men. And we even see it within maternity and the higher levels of mortality rates for black women in labor, whereby black bodies are seen to have higher pain thresholds or believe to have higher pain thresholds by the people that are caring for black women going through labor. 

Paul Campbell 30:19

So we see these ideas aren't just some sort of issue for sport. It spills over into just the wider black experience in the UK. 

Guy Burton 30:34

So if we can just bring it back, Paul, because you were talking at the very, you know, before all of this, at the very start, you talked about, you know, education and the relationship between race and football and sort of the challenges that many of these, you know, young men faced, you know, going into education and how that seems to be changing a bit. 

Guy Burton 30:53

But you also alluded in your initial introduction and the work that you've done: You've also looked at what happens to footballers and black footballers after retirement. So I wonder if you could sort of tell us a little bit about that. 

Guy Burton 31:07

What has been sort of the fate of these players that you've focused on and perhaps bring that up to date more recently? Because I think you said the cutoff point was around 2010, wasn't it? 

Paul Campbell 31:18

Yeah, sure. So ultimately, what we found is that all of them, or let me phrase that none of them actually were able to access or find careers in football after they left playing. And so many of. them experience depression, exclusion for a whole host of kind of reasons and ways they were often not only could they not access the workforce or relatively access employment that enabled them to maintain their kind of standards of life that they enjoyed as footballers, they often found that they were not able to support their families, they were experiencing breakups and for many of them this was the first time that in their adult lives that they'd found themselves in this situation. 

Paul Campbell 32:21

They'd been footballers their entire lives and thus were their identities, their friendship groups, their ideas of masculinity were all tied into not just the kind of financial rewards that football provided but also the status, it was who they were, it was who they'd ever known. 

Paul Campbell 32:41

The fact that again, their friends that in many cases, they couldn't afford to go out with their friends anymore, they still wanted to. But they they just either couldn't afford it or equally going out was painful because they socialized with footballers when they weren't again just kind of brought back the realities of where they were. 

Paul Campbell 33:06

So there were a whole host of contribution reasons for their their kinds of trauma that they were experiencing. And then they faced kind of acute issues in trying to access kind of work, which was tied into some of the most routine things like never having been to an interview before. 

Paul Campbell 33:31

And all these kinds of things that we take for granted, writing a CV, job searching, what even jobs can they do? The things that we kind of find routine that we've gone through after kind of leaving school and kind of through your formative and years as a young adult. 

Paul Campbell 33:54

These were things that these players were having to learn, experience a steep learning curve. So this was the kind of state of where they were. And really, it kind of depended almost entirely on the networks that they had, families and friends. 

Paul Campbell 34:15

And that really kind of determined the successful transition or not. If they had kind of networks where people could kind of direct providing with job opportunities, help upskill them with things like being able to write CV and so forth. 

Paul Campbell 34:33

Then they kind of had a more smoother transition. Those that didn't have those networks. they they suffered a much more painful experience. And this kind of brings us to where we are today, really, which in fairness to the games governing bodies, they have invested more and put in place much more kind of clear and visible processes and mechanisms for support. 

Paul Campbell 35:13

So ultimately, these but these are kind of generic processes, these are generic support mechanisms for all players. And these are sort of provided by the Professional Footballers Association, the union or the FA, and the general support mechanisms in terms to well being mental health and financial support for all retired players. 

Paul Campbell 35:37

Some clubs are doing their own bespoke aftercare packages. So Crystal Palace have now recently launched a three -year aftercare package, but that's dedicated specifically to young players who have been released, not players who are at the end of their careers, who haven't earned enough money to retire and need to enter mainstream work. 

Paul Campbell 36:01

But the real problem here is too. And don't forget, the project was always thinking about how does race complicate this general experience. So the first problem is a kind of generic one, is that most of these services rely on ex -professionals coming to them to access it. 

Paul Campbell 36:28

And we know that footballers, the works of [Chris] Platts [at Sheffield Hallam University] and myself, has shown that footballers suffer from what's called a learned helplessness. And what this means is basically from the moment they are identified as a potential soccer professional and then as a soccer professional, and basically from a young age, they are then supported with fixers at the club. 

Paul Campbell 36:58

And these are people who take care of all of their administrative activities from the age of entering the club to the day that they leave. And that basically they take care of things like booking a doctor's dentist, finding a house, everything. 

Paul Campbell 37:22

So basically it means that the club had these people, so it means that their asset can concentrate on what they're paying them for, which is entirely about playing. So what happens is after they leave the game after 20 years, not only are they kind of not only used to, but socializing having these things done, they leave without really any of the key administrative and self -initiative skills that are required to then kind of be a functioning adult to successfully navigate the job market. 

Paul Campbell 37:59

This is the result of being raised and read in a very specific sporting subculture that specifically breeds docility in players and that actually without those kinds of administrative and agency required to access these services, sometimes accessing them can be frustrating, accessing them can be daunting, and even debilitating for some and many. 

Paul Campbell 38:34

So that's the kind of general problem with these services which require ex -players to come to them. Now, how this is complicated by race illustrates some of the problems with the services that were available when the players, my players in my, the players that contributed in my study and players today. 

Paul Campbell 38:58

So what we've seen is, is things like charities such as MIND and the National Institute for Health have found that the experience of racism in the UK actually manifests on the body. And so what we mean by this is that what we found is the experience in racism has been found to cause astute psychological, emotional and physical trauma on people. 

Paul Campbell 39:26

And sometimes in physical ways, even not just sort of overt racism from the state, but things like stress manifesting things like alopecia and so forth. And so, and we know that black groups in the UK or black heritage individuals in the UK experience some of the most acute forms of racism in various spaces among minority ethnic groups. 

Paul Campbell 39:58

This isn't to say that they experienced the worst race, that this isn't some sort of competition about who experiences racism. But what we know is, is that black individuals experience particular acute forms of racism, particularly by the state and in education, for example. 

Paul Campbell 40:19

So what we see is, is that basically the experience of racism in the UK is one of, and I would argue one of the primary reasons that we see such high levels of mental ill health among black heritage communities in the UK. 

Paul Campbell 40:41

Add to that the kind of intersection of gender and working classness. And this really makes for a really kind of perfect cocktail for mental ill health, which is experienced by black men, particularly middle aged black men. 

Paul Campbell 41:00

So ultimately, then what we need, what we understand and recognize is that by being by the virtue of being black means that black men at that juncture are particularly prone to mental ill health. Now, if you add to that, the traumas of going through transition from such a high profile career to everyday work, that means that black footballers between the age of kind of 35. 

Paul Campbell 41:34

and 40, which is the age where most are being released, are not only prone to mental ill health through going through that transition as footballers, but that is fused with the kind of general experience of being black and male at that age of mental. 

Paul Campbell 41:55

So you have this kind of coming together of two real processes that lead to mental ill health. So what these provisions need to really do then is move away from this kind of colorblind way of viewing its members that often the PFA have, whereby it sees all members as just ex -footballers and just equal and recognize that no, different members have different needs and different members are more prone to kind of mental ill health than, you know, black members are more prone to mental ill health at this stage than maybe some of their white peers. 

Paul Campbell 42:42

And actually they need to put in place something that actually targets those members who are more prone to having more acute, experiencing more acute illness during this transition. Now this isn't some sort of, you know, we always have to be careful in this current period about the kind of attacks, about ideas of being either overreaching or being woke, this isn't this. 

Paul Campbell 43:10

Many organizations when it comes to health do this. Me as a middle -aged black man, I often, my GP often sends me text messages about testicular health screenings or being prone to high blood pressure because we know scientifically 

Paul Campbell 43:34

the people in my demographic are more prone to experience those. So it wouldn't be too much of a kind of radical leap for the games governing bodies to say, okay, well, we know that our membership from those raised backgrounds are more likely to experience this more acutely. 

Paul Campbell 43:54

So we actually maybe need to do more of an outreach that targets that group because they're more in danger. And that would be a much more, I think, tailored and fit for purpose process of aftercare. 

Francesco Belcastro 44:15

Paul, this has been absolutely fascinating. 

Francesco Belcastro 44:17

And we didn't even cover part of your research that deals, for example, with local community. So you have to promise that you're going to come back and talk to us about that part of your research in the near future. 

Paul Campbell 44:27

For sure. And it's been my pleasure. Thank you. 

Francesco Belcastro 44:30

Thank you so much for your time and generosity with the answers. Guy?

Guy Burton 44:34

Absolutely. Yes. No, no, I'm that was fascinating and really helpful. And hopefully we can also have Paul come back and talk to us about, you know, some of the fight sort of some of the policy implications of what of his work. 

Guy Burton 44:45

Before we go, though, Francesco, we also have to say a few things to the listeners, don't we? 

Francesco Belcastro 44:49

We do. Well, I mean, the first one is, I think they should go and check out not only Ana Paula's episode on race and football in Brazil, but also an episode we had a few weeks ago with Alexander Bielefeld and Alex Culvin on trade unions and football, because it fits very well with some of the stuff that Paul was saying. 

Francesco Belcastro 45:08

So that's one. And the second is to the usual one. So to please rate us, like us, follow us on whatever app they're getting their podcasts from, Spotify, Apple or any of them. We need the support in this. 

Francesco Belcastro 45:26

And then the one that you your favorite one, which is? 

Guy Burton 45:30

Well, just get in touch with us as well about sort of ideas and topics and potential guests that we can reach out to. 

Francesco Belcastro 45:37

Where can people find this, Guy? 

Guy Burton 45:39

Yes, on everywhere. So Twitter, X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blue Sky. 

Francesco Belcastro 45:45

Do you want to get your your own home address in Brussels? 

Guy Burton 45:47

Absolutely not! Absolutely not! 

Francesco Belcastro 45:49

They can see you there. 

Guy Burton 45:52

No, no, no one is no one is knocking on my door. I'm just no, no, no, just message me! Message us! Message us, or by all means contact Francesco at Derby University as well. 

Francesco Belcastro 46:03

Please, please do. 

Guy Burton 46:04

The last thing to say, of course, is who was speaking to you next week. 

Francesco Belcastro 46:07

Next week is gonna be Peter Watson from University of Leeds and the topic of the episode is the politics of football in Colombia and the Andean region. So a change of topic from this week but an interesting episode and it’s going to be available, as usual, on Monday morning on all of the main apps. So looking forward to that one!

Guy Burton 46:24

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Take care. Thanks again, Paul and see you again next week, Francesco. 

Francesco Belcastro 46:28

Thank you, Paul. Thank you.

Paul Campbell 46:30

Thank you.