Good morning fellow DFOers!

Thanks to the good folks at Make-a-Wish foundation, your imaginary pal Wakezilla is hosting the Lesser Footy AM thread again. If anyone asks, I have tumorsyphilisitisosis. Yes, I know the disease sounds both sexy and very terminal. *cough*

In case you are wondering about the featured image, that is comedian David Baddiel in literal black face with a pineapple on his head, cruelly mocking black British footy player, Jason Lee, on national TV in the 90s. This is something he did repeatedly and things got so bad, Lee has admitted that these skits seriously impacted his confidence and career. The role media has towards influencing hatred against black athletes is part of what you might have missed this week:

This piece of shit Chelsea fan called Manchester City player, Raheem Sterling a “f******* black c***” live on TV. When asked to comment about the incident, Sterling placed blame on the media for fueling the racism that he has experienced—including on his way to work— only for the same media who claim to know better, shrug their shoulders and deny their role. Why? Because it’s nice to pretend that some asshole yelling slurs at Sterling is the real racism, not the coded language that’s used to talk about black players (athletic, durable, natural, raw, etc), or the fact that black managers barely get opportunities in the EPL. Sound familiar, greater footy fans? Likewise to the NFL, it’s pretty obvious to figure out the skin coloUr of the athlete the media is talking about. Here’s the most recent example: Try and figure out who is the young white Man Shitty player and who’s the young black Man Shitty player by the headline:

Young Manchester City footballer, 20, on £25,000 a week splashes out on mansion on market for £2.25million despite having never started a Premier League match vs Manchester City starlet buys new £2m home for his mum.

Yup, it’s pretty bad and obvious.

Correspondingly to the NFL where guys like Jerry Rice and Barry Sanders were given praise for their humble, blue collar, hard workmanship attitude, while Deon Sanders and Michael Irvin were vilified, lesser footy journos praise a guy like Kante because of Kante’s inherent humbleness fits with their racist notion of how a black man should behave (hard working, grateful, knows his place). However, they attack guys like Pogba & Sterling because Sterling and Pogba’s confidence offends them. This is not a slight at all against Kante. He’s a great player, but if the media and fans can only praise black players like him for his humble, next-man-up attributes, there’s a problem.

Back to Sterling, who was essentially asked by lazy media fucks to give a dissertation thesis about the media`s impact on race issues. As a response to these headlines, Sterling took to Instagram to express his concern about the vastly different treatment that white and black players receive from the British media. Sterling drew a connection between the negative coverage that black players constantly receive and their treatment by the public. To the surprise of no one, Piers “Lets make the British Empire Great again” Morgan and those types of shit stains disagreed.

Just like in North America, there are a lot of changes that needs to be done– but most likely won’t occur in our lifetime, if ever. Whether it is sports or in world news, the media needs to stop putting the microphone in-front of racist xenophobes that feeds right wing bigotry.  Also, the media and society needs to stop expecting victims of hate crimes to be the forefront experts of these issues to educate the masses. We don’t expect a person with Alzheimer’s to become the forefront experts in Alzheimer’s, you know?

What’s more, Sterling’s incident has brought back some painful memories for Chelski’s first black player, Paul Canoville. As a result, he has chimed in by saying he experienced similar racial abuse from Cheklski fans when he played for Chelsea, and discussed how it affected him after his career. It’s an excellent, albeit depressing read.

Finally, here’s Former Liverfailure and International Tea & Crumpets lesser footy star, John Barnes, excellent commentary on Raheem Sterling’s comments about the media fueling racism:

In less depressing news, something YUGE happened in the Champions league. Entering this year, the Old Lady spent a significant amount of money to become the eye of Europe. Not that Juventus looked bad before, but, she really wanted to sit on Europe’s face and culminate in winning the Champion’s League title. Well, they had a little set back as DFO’s Young Boys’ virility was too much to overcome, as Young Boys got Messi and scored early and often to defeat Mrs.Robinson 2-1.

In case you’re wondering, United lost to Valencia because when you go over 70 minutes without registering a shot on target, you’re probably going to lose and are playing like shit. Defensive pylon, Phil Jones scored an own goal which was the first time United conceded an own goal since Phil Jones in 2011. Perhaps most damning of all, fellow EPL players were mocking Jones on twitter with his #PhilJonesface.

In shocking news, there was also a Thomas Mueller sighting in Champions League:

To the games!

Evershit vs Man Shitty: This is very much a ‘do or die’ situation for Evershit. If they want to keep pace and finish in the top 4, Everton needs to take three points at Shittier Manchester Stadium. For those who are looking to pay tribute to Gamblor, Everton has tied their last three away matches at Manchester, and in all competitions, Man Shitty has won just 2 of their last 7 matches (with only one clean sheet) against Evershit.

West Rum Ham vs  Lesser Footy Jaguars: This is a big match for both clubs. Rum Ham could go from 11^th to 7^th with a victory (and some help). As for Mighty Fulham, they need to go all out and get a win to try and escape relegation hell. Unfortunately for them, as we saw last week, it turns out coaching wasn’t the problem for their lackadaisical start. (Holy shit! I spelt lackadaisical correct on the first attempt!) To give our boy Litre some hope, Fulham have won 3 of their last 4 EPL matches against Rum Ham. Also, Fulham have beautiful home kits.

Crystal Palace vs Foxes: This match has potential upset written all over it. Crystal Palace have won the last two EPL meetings between these two clubs and Leicester have won just 3 of 14 meetings at Selhurst Park.

In Spain, there’s no real sexy matchup going on in La Liga today.

Over in Serie A, 6^th place Torino (22 points) is playing first place Juventus (43 points).  A win by Torino could place them within a point of 4^th place and a Champions league spot.

Enjoy the games!

. . .Lets just hope none of the games we watch turn out like this:

https://twitter.com/FutbolBabes/status/1032254165320458240