Joe Jacobson: ‘I have to speak out. Football sometimes needs to be prompted’

Wycombe’s captain, one of a handful of Jewish footballers in England, on coping with abuse and the sport’s response

“I knew by speaking out that I would get a backlash,” Joe Jacobson says. The Wycombe Wanderers defender, who is one of a handful of Jewish footballers playing in England, is speaking with depressing honesty. Jacobson, who hopes to lead Wycombe out at Wembley when they face Peterborough United in the EFL Trophy final on Sunday afternoon, was targeted after posting on social media about Hamas attacking Israel on 7 October.

There was nothing particularly controversial about the 37-year-old Welshman’s comments. Jacobson simply questioned images of people in London and Sydney appearing to celebrate the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. “We got a few comments back,” he says. Continue reading...

Komentar

Posting Komentar

Postingan populer dari blog ini

Vivianne Miedema’s Manchester City WSL debut just had to be at Arsenal

Gambar
All eyes will be on the league’s record goalscorer as she returns to the club where she spent seven successful years When the fixture list landed for the Women’s Super League season and the standout “Arsenal versus Manchester City” glared conspicuously on the opening weekend page, one player’s name was on almost everybody’s lips: Vivianne Miedema. The WSL’s all-time leading goalscorer spent the past seven years of her career at Arsenal, so where else would her new team be travelling to for their first league game of the season other than the Emirates, to face a club whose fans have adored her since she arrived from Bayern Munich in 2017? Continue reading...
Baca selengkapnya

Increasing diversity among leaders in football is more than a moral priority | Jason Stockwood

Gambar
Diverse businesses perform better – so why is sport so slow in appointing leaders from across every section of society? On Thursday 22 October 1992, I attended an event in Crewe to hear Simon Armitage, a newly published poet, read his work. I remember the date because I still have the ticket and poetry recitals were not a normal night out for those of us who grew up in the pubs and clubs of Grimsby in that era. It was a night that changed my life as I glimpsed a possible world that could coexist alongside the heavy-drinking, sometimes scrapping, football-loving culture and the constraints men set themselves back then. Some constraints were self-imposed, others were rooted in the ignorance and prejudice of the time. This was typified when, years later, my mum found out I liked the creative arts and her response was to ask if I was gay. A bizarre conclusion, unthinking and uneducated, but not unusual then. Simon was one of the first poets I saw – a cool young Yorkshireman who wrote a...
Baca selengkapnya

Football Daily | Cup final day is no longer unmissable, but this one means all in Manchester

Gambar
Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now! Saturday, Wembley Way. The tribes will gather, demarcated by red and blue – though Mancunian fashion by-laws dictate all adult males must wear white ankle socks below thigh-revealing shorts, should temperatures top 15 degrees. It’s likely to be bad-tempered; it always is between these two, but rail strikes and lengthy motorway delays from Congleton downwards are hardly likely to ease the mood. Continue reading...
Baca selengkapnya