In the midst of the publicity for the Black Lives Matter movement and other associative organisations, the last thing that football commentators will want to hear is that a survey has been done into their behaviour, and a number of them don’t come out of it well.
According to the Daily Mail, commentaries are riddled with racial bias, and the PFA want to try and stamp it out once and for all.
Along with Danish company, Run Repeat, the monitoring of the same has thrown up a few issues, namely;
Players with lighter skin tones receiving significantly more praise for their intelligence, quality, work rate and versatility.
Players with darker skin tones receiving at least 63 per cent of the criticism when it came to comments made about intelligence, quality and versatility.
Players with darker skin tones being more likely to be reduced to their physical attributes, receiving almost seven times more comments about their power and over three times more about their speed.
The findings do a deep dive into all aspects of commentary and the above list isn’t extensive.
What it has indicated beyond doubt is that commentators need to do a lot more than just follow stereotypes and repeat them parrot-fashion whist covering live matches.