The "lazy black player" stereotype

GeorgieBoy

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I know Lukaku gets a lot of stick for his first touch from the Vaf
However IMHO what an intelligent player he is. He would have trained all week expecting to be a front two and then when injuries occured vs Liverpool did whatever was needed from him. He really puts un a shift and understands the game situation giving his aĺl. Would be great if half the Caf could get kf his back and appreciate the work he puts in to the team. Well done Rom!
I think you're in the wrong thread mate, Lukaku was god awful today...
 

dogwithabone

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I think you're in the wrong thread mate, Lukaku was god awful today...
Come on, I'm no Lukaku fan but he worked his nuts off second half especially.

His touch is clumsy, his passes go astray and criticism in that respect is fair enough but he did some great defensive stuff deep in our half.
 

Morpheus 7

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Come on, I'm no Lukaku fan but he worked his nuts off second half especially.

His touch is clumsy, his passes go astray and criticism in that respect is fair enough but he did some great defensive stuff deep in our half.
@GeorgieBoy is right, he was fcking dreadful. Rashford played 70 minutes after getting injured and could barely run and looked better. He's simply not been good enough this season
 

NoPace

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Come on, I'm no Lukaku fan but he worked his nuts off second half especially.

His touch is clumsy, his passes go astray and criticism in that respect is fair enough but he did some great defensive stuff deep in our half.
Yeah, he played well defensively and hit a great cross that really could have won the game. Wasn't brilliant or anything but a solid Dirk Kuyt kinda performance.
 

soaphroniscuss

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@jojojo

It adds something to the conversation Jabroni, it's just that you cannot see it.

OP suggested that compliments should be interpreted literally and independent of context.

"Hell Yeah" is a compliment but it also an insult under the right context. OP is an American and so will be aware of this.

Kids playing referee never works....

Ciao
 

kouroux

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I think the whole "the player is a physical specimen" thing is an over reaction.

When you see a player take on 3 people, hold them off, and control the ball, what is your reaction going to be? Oh look how silky smooth his technique is? Or is it, he just trucked 3 guys, because he's a monster". It's the latter, almost 100% of the time. The skills are self evident if you can do that, and there are plenty of people who have the technical skills to hold up a ball, there are not many players who have that technical aspect AND the size and strength to stiff arm one guy, body another, and nutmeg a third and then come out the other side of all that with the ball.

Did people call racism when people talked about Vidic or Stam as absolute units who physically imposed themselves on the game? No, because at the end of the day, it's all praise.
I see it the complete opposite. Much more common to see players displaying strength than pure technique
 

Nucks

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I see it the complete opposite. Much more common to see players displaying strength than pure technique
Sure, but not holding off 3 guys :) You might see a guy brute force someone off the ball while shielding it, but rarely do you see someone who has the technique and strength to hold off 3 guys AND keep the ball. I don't think shielding the ball from one person is necessarily a difficult skill, nor is it a particularly impressive feat of strength. Keep good body position and the only way someone can take the ball off you is to come through you and foul. Add another person though, and it's starting to be a matter of strength and technique, add a third and its also strength and technique, but there are very few guys who have the strength required to hold off 3 players, plenty of guys have that technique, few have the size and strength combined with the technique.
 

kouroux

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Sure, but not holding off 3 guys :) You might see a guy brute force someone off the ball while shielding it, but rarely do you see someone who has the technique and strength to hold off 3 guys AND keep the ball. I don't think shielding the ball from one person is necessarily a difficult skill, nor is it a particularly impressive feat of strength. Keep good body position and the only way someone can take the ball off you is to come through you and foul. Add another person though, and it's starting to be a matter of strength and technique, add a third and its also strength and technique, but there are very few guys who have the strength required to hold off 3 players, plenty of guys have that technique, few have the size and strength combined with the technique.
I cannot agree with that.
 

Dante

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I don't think there's anything wrong with lauding a player's physical aptitude. Pogba has the body of a Greek God, and in the Premier League that's hugely beneficial. You can't blame people for focusing on that when it's been the major feature of the game in this country for decades.

There is, however, something wrong with judging a person's character without a strong basis. Accusations of laziness and a lack of intelligence (after a single incident) are crossing the line into obvious prejudice.
 

Cassidy

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I don't think there's anything wrong with lauding a player's physical aptitude. Pogba has the body of a Greek God, and in the Premier League that's hugely beneficial. You can't blame people for focusing on that when it's been the major feature of the game in this country for decades.

There is, however, something wrong with judging a person's character without a strong basis. Accusations of laziness and a lack of intelligence (after a single incident) are crossing the line into obvious prejudice.
Many white players have great athletic bodies but its not mentioned
 

RochaRoja

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His list of lazy players was pretty funny.

Wayne Hennessey

He used to just lay down in the gym on one of those thick blue mats and just relaxed while the rest of us worked out.

Bryan Ruiz

He was never near the gym, I don't think he even knew where it was.


He absolutely hated being even marginally uncomfortable. If it was cold or we were away to Stoke he'd never come along.

Dimitar Berbatov

I've never seen a man get so many massages in my life. I'm certain he spent more hours getting massaged than he trained.


Whenever we were in the gym working out, Berbatov was getting massages.

I knew the guy who gave him massages and usually at the end of the season the players give the physios a gift: a trip, a car, money, whatever.

He'd massaged Berbatov for hundreds of hours this season and he got nothing.

Emmanuel Adebayor

I played for Fulham and he played for Spurs. We were attacking and I was marking Adebayor in the midfield, suddenly he says "Ah, I'm hungry."


I replied, "What?"

"I can't wait for the game to finish, I'm so hungry. Do you know a good restaurant in London, Hangeland?"

Later when he came to Crystal Palace I started to realise where this came from. When we had strength workouts he would sit in the gym with just a cup of coffee and a muffin.

He was being paid by Manchester City, Tottenham and Palace at the same time, and he was sitting in the gym drinking coffee.

Incredible natural talent, very lazy.

Bobby Zamora

A strong man, but hated the gym intensely. Whenever it was time for deadlifts he'd start feeling his hamstring.


This happened every single time we went to the gym.

Wilfried Zaha

Amazing physique and very athletic, huge potential. On some Mondays he would come over to me and say "I'm starting my program now!"He'd clearly decided to start it during the weekend.


We'd then go to the gym together and he'd do like five push-ups, sigh, and leave. He would be incredible if he was serious.

Jimmy Bullard

Great player, but so incredibly weak. Never interested in going into the gym - at all.

Also his story about Bellamy as the biggest idiot in football.

During the handshakes before the game, Bellamy took my hand. He was a head lower than me. He looked me straight in the eye and said, "You f****** w*****".

I was thinking, “What the hell? I've never even met you!"




Hangeland going for a world record of slightly different anecdotes about people not liking the gym.
 

Nucks

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I cannot agree with that.
Because you're missing the fundamental point.

Nobody holds 3 players off with technique alone. Very few of the players that have the technique to hold off 3 players, have the strength to do it. Hold off one player? Technique. Hold off two players, mostly technique and a little bit of strength. Hold off three players? Technique and a metric shit tonne of strength. When Pogba does this, he is typically stiff arming one guy, bodying a second, and dribbling a third. He is using strength to deal with 2, and technique to deal with the third challenge.

Who out there on a regular basis does what Pogba does when he stiff arms stooge A, bodies stooge B, and nutmegs stooge 3, before he lays the ball off? When someone like Messi beats 3 players, he is doing something fundamentally different than what Pogba is doing. Messi is dribbling through/past 3 people. Pogba has that in his tool kit occasionally, but what Pogba is doing is holding the ball up, at the end of a game to kill time, or to wait to bring more players into the attack.
 

RochaRoja

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Guardian has a piece about this today, which makes a (good) point I don’t think I’ve read in this thread.



Wasn’t Zidane a bit of a unit too? Anyone know his height/weight when he was in his prime?
Yeah, Pogba is actually very lean. 84kgs for his height is light.
 

RochaRoja

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There's US students race base studies which show that Black students who come from famlies with an income of 120,000 dollars a year still do worse than White students who came from families on 60,000 a year. There's overwhelming stats/evidence which point to black people on average have a lower IQ than White or Asian people. The races with highest average IQ is not Europeans, its actually the people's from Sout East asia. To be honeest i dont think this kind of thing should be such a taboo subject. Only far right Neo Nazis would try and make a big deal out of it.
Intelligence quotient has been widely discredited and has a strong Eurasiancentric bias.
 

kouroux

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Because you're missing the fundamental point.

Nobody holds 3 players off with technique alone. Very few of the players that have the technique to hold off 3 players, have the strength to do it. Hold off one player? Technique. Hold off two players, mostly technique and a little bit of strength. Hold off three players? Technique and a metric shit tonne of strength. When Pogba does this, he is typically stiff arming one guy, bodying a second, and dribbling a third. He is using strength to deal with 2, and technique to deal with the third challenge.

Who out there on a regular basis does what Pogba does when he stiff arms stooge A, bodies stooge B, and nutmegs stooge 3, before he lays the ball off? When someone like Messi beats 3 players, he is doing something fundamentally different than what Pogba is doing. Messi is dribbling through/past 3 people. Pogba has that in his tool kit occasionally, but what Pogba is doing is holding the ball up, at the end of a game to kill time, or to wait to bring more players into the attack.
I still don't agree and no I didn't miss your point, making me sound like a fool won't be making you more right.
 

Borden

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Generally, when the word “many” has been used it’s better to provide more than one exception.
Like Zlatan?

Big and strong players tend to get complimented for being big and strong, and extremely fit and athletic players tend to get complimented for being extremely fit and athletic. To suggest that has anything to do with skin color is frankly laughable.
 
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RochaRoja

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Like Zlatan?

Big and strong players tend to get complimented for being big and strong, and extremely fit and athletic players tend to get complimented for being extremely fit and athletic. To suggest that has anything to do with skin color is frankly laughable.
Even “physical specimens” like Cristiano and Zlatan who aren’t black are mostly praised for their skill, technique and intelligence. Pogba’s physical qualities are usually his most praised attribute by the media.
 

Sky1981

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Even “physical specimens” like Cristiano and Zlatan who aren’t black are mostly praised for their skill, technique and intelligence. Pogba’s physical qualities are usually his most praised attribute by the media.
Why not? It his his prime strenght. I dont get how that's racist. Pogba uses his upper body strenght better than 98 percent of the league. He got praised for it. How is it racist...
 

RochaRoja

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Why not? It his his prime strenght. I dont get how that's racist. Pogba uses his upper body strenght better than 98 percent of the league. He got praised for it. How is it racist...
There’s about 23 pages of responses to this question that would explain exactly why. There’s no point in me repeating the bloody obvious when so many other posters have done it so much better.

I don’t even agree that his physicality is his “prime strength”. He is a phenomenal passer and has great technique. If he wasn’t black, he’d probably be seen in a much more flattering light as the “maestro” that the Köln fan above was talking about. Pogba would still be a top player if he was built like Marvin Martin but would not if he had the technical ability of Carlton Palmer.

I always think the best example of the media’s unconcious racial bias is the difference in the way Steven Gerrard and Yaya Touré are described and the emphasis put on certain aspects of their skillsets. They were both very similar players at their best (though Touré was imo a more intelligent footballer and obviously had the better career.)
 

Nucks

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I still don't agree and no I didn't miss your point, making me sound like a fool won't be making you more right.
Don't be so sensitive. I'm not saying you're a fool, or trying to make you look like one.

I don't think you understand the point I am making. You need X level of technique to hold off 3 players, because you can't actually hold off 3 players with technique, you can't even hold off two players with technique, you can really only hold off 1 player with technique. You need that baseline level of technique, that MANY players have, combined with that Y+3 level of strength and body control to hold off those extra players. You need to leverage physical attributes to engage and take on the 2 extra players, because all the technique in the world won't matter for shit when player number 2, and player number 3 close you down, collapsing the space around you, and then sticking a boot in.

That is all strength and body control. Strength to maintain that zone of space around the ball from those other 2 players, and then technique facilitated by superior body control to maintain that technique while straining at a very high portion of your strength to use your strength to maintain space on the other two players.

Maybe this isn't something you're familiar with because you're not experienced with a sport that demands a high degree of physicality. My background in American football makes me appreciate how fecking insane it is, to leverage that degree of strength while maintaining the fine touch and technique to beat the left over man. They are two things that are almost antithetical to one another. As a function of straining against two people to hold them off with strength, you're making it that much more difficult to maintain a fine, feather touch. It's like picking up an egg with a vice grip. What this means, is that Pogba isn't straining near his maximal strength to create that space with his strength, it means his effort is well within the limits of allowing him to maintain the fine touch, and that, my friend, is why it's so fecking impressive.
 

Conor

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Yeah, Pogba is actually very lean. 84kgs for his height is light.
84kgs is not really light for a midfielder at that height, for someone with probably single digit fat percentage. Also, in reference to that article, Pogba is amazing at using his body and strength to gain advantage in 1v1/2/3 situations, does Andre Gomes play in the same way? Unless he does, I'm not sure why that's relevant to any discussion.
 

Bestietom

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I think Lukaku is now playing better. He is very strong and can hold off the big CB's and still come away with the ball.

Yes, he misses a few chances but what CF don't. I remember Fergie saying one time, that Cole need 10 chances to score 1. But his record same as Lukaku's speaks for itself. The way we are playing now will suit Lukaku up front and as long as he puts the ball in the net for a winner I don't care. We need a big strong CF in this Premiership, and with Rashford alongside him it will work.
 

MadMike

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Generally I’ve seen less of the stereotype mentioned in the title and more of routinely describing black players as physical specimens/strong and white players as very intelligent. The commentator at NBC was on it again with Sissoko and Eriksen yesterday during the North London derby. It made me cringe a fair bit.
 

2 man midfield

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I always think the best example of the media’s unconcious racial bias is the difference in the way Steven Gerrard and Yaya Touré are described and the emphasis put on certain aspects of their skillsets. They were both very similar players at their best (though Touré was imo a more intelligent footballer and obviously had the better career.)
I don’t think that’s a very good example, purely because Gerrard is built nothing like Yaya Toure. Gerrard was athletic and had a great engine on him, which was frequently mentioned by just about everyone, but he wasn’t built like a brick shit house who had the ability to lumber forward while opposition players bounced off him. Yaya did, and it was quite a sight, hence why it got mentioned along with his other amazing skills.
 

RochaRoja

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I don’t think that’s a very good example, purely because Gerrard is built nothing like Yaya Toure. Gerrard was athletic and had a great engine on him, which was frequently mentioned by just about everyone, but he wasn’t built like a brick shit house who had the ability to lumber forward while opposition players bounced off him. Yaya did, and it was quite a sight, hence why it got mentioned along with his other amazing skills.
Yaya may have been bigger than Gerrard but both were tall and lean and make powerful bursts from midfield. I don’t think Gerrard was any less likely to do it than Yaya, it was a huge part of his armory. He was at his best when he was explosive and powerful, bursting through defenses. The main difference is the perception of seeing a 1.88m black man doing it rather than an 1.83m white man doing it.

“Lumber” is also an interesting adjective to use.
 

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Anyone mention the John Motson incident:

'Veteran football commentator John Motson has offered a personal apology to Tom Elliott after he described the Millwall striker as 'big, black and brave' on the radio.'

Yet we still have posters in this thread claiming this is a non existent problem :houllier:
 

2 man midfield

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Yaya may have been bigger than Gerrard but both were tall and lean and make powerful bursts from midfield. I don’t think Gerrard was any less likely to do it than Yaya, it was a huge part of his armory. He was at his best when he was explosive and powerful, bursting through defenses. The main difference is the perception of seeing a 1.88m black man doing it rather than an 1.83m white man doing it.

“Lumber” is also an interesting adjective to use.
It's the adjective I used because that's what he did. He could do it because of his strength, if Gerrard lumbered forward then he'd have the ball nicked off him.
 

kouroux

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Don't be so sensitive. I'm not saying you're a fool, or trying to make you look like one.

I don't think you understand the point I am making. You need X level of technique to hold off 3 players, because you can't actually hold off 3 players with technique, you can't even hold off two players with technique, you can really only hold off 1 player with technique. You need that baseline level of technique, that MANY players have, combined with that Y+3 level of strength and body control to hold off those extra players. You need to leverage physical attributes to engage and take on the 2 extra players, because all the technique in the world won't matter for shit when player number 2, and player number 3 close you down, collapsing the space around you, and then sticking a boot in.

That is all strength and body control. Strength to maintain that zone of space around the ball from those other 2 players, and then technique facilitated by superior body control to maintain that technique while straining at a very high portion of your strength to use your strength to maintain space on the other two players.

Maybe this isn't something you're familiar with because you're not experienced with a sport that demands a high degree of physicality. My background in American football makes me appreciate how fecking insane it is, to leverage that degree of strength while maintaining the fine touch and technique to beat the left over man. They are two things that are almost antithetical to one another. As a function of straining against two people to hold them off with strength, you're making it that much more difficult to maintain a fine, feather touch. It's like picking up an egg with a vice grip. What this means, is that Pogba isn't straining near his maximal strength to create that space with his strength, it means his effort is well within the limits of allowing him to maintain the fine touch, and that, my friend, is why it's so fecking impressive.
This is much better explained now. I see where you are coming from and since you own experience in a different sport, I'll mention mine too in real football for over 20 years of playing. We do not see it the same
 

kouroux

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Anyone mention the John Motson incident:

'Veteran football commentator John Motson has offered a personal apology to Tom Elliott after he described the Millwall striker as 'big, black and brave' on the radio.'

Yet we still have posters in this thread claiming this is a non existent problem :houllier:
As a black person, I find it funny more than anything else.
 

sullydnl

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It's the adjective I used because that's what he did. He could do it because of his strength, if Gerrard lumbered forward then he'd have the ball nicked off him.
This is a total side note but did Yaya really "lumber"? That implies a kind of slow, awkward movement. I seem to remember him being quicker and more graceful than that.
 

Cassidy

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Yeah nobody ever compliments Ronaldo.
He primarily not described and big and powerful no. It has nothing to do with compliments and about the primary description of a player
 

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This is a total side note but did Yaya really "lumber"? That implies a kind of slow, awkward movement. I seem to remember him being more graceful than that.
Yeah, kind of. He wasn't blessed with great pace like Gerrard was. Where Gerrard "exploded" forward, Yaya lumbered. He basically walked through entire opposition midfields because his strength allowed him to do so.