Introduction

This chapter examines the degree to which racism and the under-representativeness of ethnic minorities within leadership roles in European football is a factor of an institutionalized approach around such matters demonstrated by the game's governing elite. In June 2012, a major conference on sport, race and ethnicity took place in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Aside from its academic content, the conference was significant on a number of levels. Combined, the factors created a rich academic backdrop in which matters of identity, marginalization, discrimination, racism and division predominated. League's best teams has required the football industry at large, its players and spectators, to quickly reflect upon what this means for their often long-standing views concerning minority populations, 'new arrivals' and the increasingly multi-cultural society in which they now reside. It is this theme of football rivalry that is addressed in remarkable detail by Seweryn Dmowski in his coverage of the geographical typology of these tensions within a European setting.