Television viewers and reporters regularly talk in racial or ethnic stereotypes when they talk about football, according to research by Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR).
Jacco van Sterkenburg, scientist at the EUR, investigated how Dutch football viewers talk about the players they see. In their conversations, stereotypes regularly emerge. Black footballers - the researchers particularly mention the players of Surinamese descent - were regularly associated with natural physical strength or 'animality', while the white players were more often associated with tactical and technical qualities.