Racism, sexism and appalling apologies – the week that shamed football | David Conn

[Guest]

Recent events show just how far football has left to go to combat the dark-age set of attitudes that exists within the game – and in 2014 that is depressing

Just a week into the new season of the glamorous, glossy “greatest league in the world”, English football has been dragged again, by the Malky Mackay text allegations, into a swamp of racism, sexism, old-style antisemitism, and homophobia. As ever, such scandals have two principal elements: the offence itself, however it came to light, and the response to it.

Mackay and Iain Moody, the former head of recruitment at Cardiff City on whose phone the texts were found – although it is not yet clear who sent what – have been plunged into a nightmare by the club’s owner, Vincent Tan. He pursued them over money he believes was mis-spent at the club – they deny it – and exhumed the texts via a search order of computers and phones. Currently, as far as is known, no financial wrongdoing by either man has been unearthed. But however uncomfortable the thought of such intrusion into exchanges casually sent – whether on work or private emails or phones – the attitudes the search has revealed are awful and, in 2014, deeply depressing.

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