England’s diverse Euro 2020 squad has used the power of their voices to help put debates on the table, raise awareness and educate

The Voice acknowledges that there is work to be done, for sure, and while there is scant evidence that diverse and successful sports teams can change minds, they can hold up a mirror to the best parts of society and show us another way forward

DIVERSITY: The England team line up before the UEFA Euro 2020 Championship Group D match between England and Croatia on June 13. Photo by Shaun Botterill - UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images

WHEN MARCUS RASHFORD, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka missed their penalties in England’s encounter with Italy, observers knew the racist bile would arrive with wearying inevitability.

Amid the recriminations of the past few days and the latest round of hypocrisies from those tasked with governing us, one message has shone through: this England team is perhaps the truest expression yet of young English male society found in elite sport.

That is not to say that Gareth Southgate’s squad are universally winning hearts and minds – a few missed spot kicks was all it took to embolden the racists – but more than half of England’s 26-man squad for Euro 2020 had a parent or grandparent born overseas.

To cite a few, England captain Harry Kane’s father comes from Letterfrack in County Galway on Ireland’s west coast, and Raheem Sterling was born in Kingston, Jamaica – the same island where right-back Kyle Walker’s father was born. Then there is Kalvin Phillips, who has roots in both Ireland and Jamaica.

JAMAICAN ROOTS: Kalvin Phillips of England celebrates after Harry Kane (not in frame) scored their team’s second goal during the UEFA Euro 2020 Championship semi-final match between England and Denmark at Wembley Photo by Alex Morton – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images

And while we are at it, Rashford has family ties to St Kitts, Sancho’s parents are from Trinidad & Tobago, and Bukayo Saka’s are Nigerian.

To a man, they speak of pride in their roots and happily express their Englishness.

Where the Football Association has succeeded in recent times – aided by the groundwork of performance coach Owen Eastwood, a former lawyer of Maori descent – is in creating a culture around the England men’s setup that feels inclusive, allowing individuals to express their personal identities while empowering them to collectively generate an England team culture they can be happy to own.

Starting in 2016, Eastwood, who has worked with organisations including the New Zealand Warriors, South Africa men’s cricket team,  and the British Olympic Association, spoke to England internationals past and present.

Eastwood concluded that the England setup lacked ‘whakapapa’ – a Maori term that describes finding a sense of belonging within a tribe. ‘Over the whole of my England career, within the dressing room there was never any mention of the team’s history, nor what it was to be English,’ former England stalwart Michael Owen told Eastwood in his book Belonging: The Ancient Code of Togetherness.

There was a realisation within the FA that images of a bloodstained Terry Butcher or bellowing Stuart Pearce simply did not resonate with a younger generation.

“You want players to connect to the team in a multitude of ways,” Dave Reddin, the FA’s former head of team strategy & performance told the Athletic earlier this month.

“Someone like Raheem Sterling is a proud Englishman, but he was born in Jamaica and he’s rightly very proud of his Jamaican roots.

“He might identify more with those values than with certain traditions, outdated English perceptions of what the England team’s values should be. We wanted to reflect what the England football team means to people in the 21st century and what it should look like to those players within the squad.”

The solidarity of this squad is most powerfully expressed in their continuing desire to take the knee in opposition to racism in football and society. The act was dismissed as ‘gesture politics’ in some quarters and the players have been booed to a greater or lesser extent on each occasion, often amid flimsy claims that they are doing so in support of Marxist revolutionaries.

HONEST: Gareth Southgate

Gareth Southgate nipped that last one in the bud prior to the European Championship. He also penned an article in the build-up for the Players’ Tribune that spelled out their position. ‘I have a responsibility to the wider community to use my voice, and so do the players,’ he wrote. ‘It’s their duty to continue to interact with the public on matters such as equality, inclusivity and racial injustice, while using the power of their voices to help put debates on the table, raise awareness and educate.’

While the putrid responses to those missed penalties hurt – and nothing can cloud society’s enduring problems with racial and social injustice – here was finally an England team that could call upon support from all corners of English society.

One has to hope that this is the direction of travel. In 2019, when England’s men won the Cricket World Cup at Lord’s, the team’s Irish-born captain Eoin Morgan was told by England spinner Adil Rashid that “Allah was with us.”

Much of that side had its roots in South Asia, including all-rounder Moeen Ali. ‘We are an incredibly diverse team from different backgrounds and cultures but, crucially, we respect this and embrace it. We never shy away from it, he wrote in the Guardian following England’s triumph.

WINNERS ALL ROUND: England’s cricket World Cup winers with Prime Minister Theresa May in 2019
Photo by Niklas HALLE’N / AFP) (Photo by NIKLAS HALLE’N/AFP via Getty Images)

Other members of that team included the South African-born Jason Roy and Tom Curran, the Bajan Joffra Archer, and the New Zealand-born Ben Stokes.

Not that any England team can afford to rest on their laurels. It is only four years since former England women’s head coach Mark Sampson was found to have made comments that were ‘discriminatory on grounds of race’ to Eni Aluko and Drew Spence.

Women’s football has taken huge strides, not only in the standard of play but also in its embrace of LGBTQ+ players – far more than across the men’s game – yet a study in 2020 found that just an estimated 10-15% of players in the Women’s Super League were black.

“I think there’s a variety of reasons for that,” Aluko, now the director of women’s football at Aston Villa, told Sky Sports News in March. “Maybe there’s a disconnect between academies now, and where the game is professionalising, there’s a little bit of a disconnect between inner-city talent and academies that are training in the suburbs of cities.”

The ECB are also working hard behind the scenes to promote women’s cricket in inner-city communities.

Work to be done, for sure, and while there is scant evidence that diverse and successful sports teams can change minds, they can hold up a mirror to the best parts of society and show us another way forward.

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