ABSTRACT
The sociocultural domain of association football is radically transformed by complex globalization flows and processes such as the increasing mobility and instability of players aiming at a career in the sport. While diversities in football – particularly those pertaining to ethnicity, citizenship and nationality – are becoming more complex and multi-layered, there is also a rapid mediatization of several kinds of football discourse, exemplified in the growing diversity of the participatory formats of ‘Web 2.0’. With a discourse-analytic, sociolinguistic approach to football discourse in and across various texts and contexts, this chapter discusses the tension between racist and anti-racist discourses emerging from the inclusion and integration of Black football players with an African origin in national teams and clubs in European nation states. After a comparative review of situations and cases in other European countries, the empirical focus of this chapter is on Finland and, in particular, debates on the Sierra Leonean talent, former asylum seeker Medo and his life trajectory in and out of Finland as a professional footballer. Representations of the ‘Other’ in football culture, voiced via digitally mediated communication contexts, open a window to Late Modern experience, ambivalence, and changing ethea of prejudice, discrimination, equality, and inclusion.
