European Soccer’s Racist Present

As the world prepares for the first World Cup on African soil, a black American is challenging ongoing racism in European football.

By: Sherrilyn A. Ifill

Soccer teams from all over the world are playing right now in South Africa’s Confederations Cup—the group of qualifying matches leading up to next year’s World Cup in South Africa. But as teams prepare for 2010’s historic World Cup, the first on the African continent, an important legal case is unfolding in a courtroom in Belgium that may affect one ugly aspect of the game. There, a case filed by Oguchi Onyewu, a member of the U.S. national soccer team and until recently a defender on the Belgium club Standard Liege, is set to be decided, and it may have enormous precedential value.

European Soccer’s Racist Present....