Racism in football: progress or platitudes?

In his first Mind Room column, journalist Jonathan Harding reflects on a timely extract from his book, 'Soul', examining football's efforts to put people before players

The Euros are over and football's summer transfer window is open, which means headlines about ‘Berlin Fall’, 'Kane's Pain', and 'insert England player and overused literary device of choice' are about to replaced by 'done deals', baseless speculation about Ligue 1 teenagers and (still) columns by Harry Redknapp.

It's reporting The Mind Room typically shuns with the type of cold shoulder Cristiano Ronaldo reserves for teammates who have just missed crucial penalty kicks.

But we're not immune to some summer announcements of our own, which - you'll be glad to know - ends this introduction to Jonathan Harding's first Mind Room column.

Jonathan is a freelance journalist who has worked with The Athletic, The Times and ESPN (among others). He's written two books - Soul and Mensch - rightly credited for shining a powerful light on coaching and player care. He's also someone I know is genuinely passionate about investigating the impact of psychological demands on athletes.

Which is why Jonathan's column will be a bi-weekly feature of the newsletter. I'll still be penning stories each fortnight, but Jonathan's arrival means you now have access to two distinct (but, we think, complimentary) voices on a subjects still woefully underrepresented in the media at large.

To mark Jonathan's first post (and the small matter of the Olympics!), we've taken 20% off the price of Mind Room membership, with the discount available on monthly and annual subscriptions (until August 11th).

Signing up - for just £3.99 per month (or £39 per year) - gives you access to:

• The weekly Mind Room newsletter

• The full archive of 150+ stories and podcast episodes, covering sport psychology theory, practice and strategy

• The monthly podcast/Q&A

I'll be back with a separate post about membership in the coming days, but until then, here's the extract from Soul, which looks at the impact of racism - and what we can do to counter it.

It’s a subject that should consistently feature in discussions about the future of sport, but which often requires a regrettable incident to generate serious coverage.

Unfortunately, that’s happened, with news that Chelsea have begun disciplinary proceedings against midfielder Enzo Fernandez, after the Argentine midefielder posted a video on social media that the French Football Federation (FFF) said included an alleged "racist and discriminatory" chant.

Fernandez’s actions - and those of his Argentine teammates - are being bravely called out, with the Chelsea player’s teammate, Wesley Fofana, describing the video as an example of ‘uninhibited racism.’ In Jonathan’s opening column, he looks at the long-term effect of this type of behaviour and the - sometimes painfully slow - progress of efforts to counter it.