Racism and Sanctions in Football: The FA’s Record and the Education Imperative

Why archive hunting matters: a contemporary case that exposes an old problem

Racism in sport is not only a moral crisis; for students, teachers and researchers it is a messy archival challenge. Primary sources—disciplinary rulings, hearing transcripts, and education outcomes—are often scattered, redacted or behind paywalls, making it hard to answer basic questions: how severe are sanctions, do they deter repeat behaviour, and what role do education programmes actually play?

We begin with a clear, recent entry point: the Football Association’s decision in January 2026 to impose a six-game ban on Liverpool goalkeeper Rafaela Borggräfe after an FA investigation found she made a racist remark referring to skin colour. Borggräfe accepted the sanction and was ordered to enrol on an education programme. The incident—overheard by teammates while the squad prepared for a photograph—illuminates the disciplinary process and the FA’s current reliance on combined punitive and educative measures.

Immediate takeaway

For researchers and teachers: Borggräfe’s case is a contemporary node in a long disciplinary archive. Study it against older FA cases to identify patterns in sanctions, the extent of recidivism, and the documented outcomes of mandatory education.

“The Liverpool goalkeeper Rafaela Borggräfe was given a six-game ban by the Football Association after being found to have made a racist comment that involved reference to skin colour.” (The Guardian, 16 January 2026)

The FA’s disciplinary record: a historical arc

The FA’s record on racism-related discipline has evolved through three overlapping phases: initial criminal and civil responses (1980s–2000s), a period of high-profile disciplinary cases and public debate (2000s–2010s), and, since the 2010s, the emergence of combined sanctions that pair bans and fines with education and restorative requirements.

Phase 1: Criminalisation and protest (1980s–2000s)

Early institutional responses focused on crowd control and criminal enforcement: stadium bans, policing of chants, and public awareness campaigns to tackle monkey chants and other overt racial abuse in stands. Documentation from this era is frequently uneven; many club records remain undigitised.

Phase 2: High-profile player cases (2000s–2010s)

The first decades of the 21st century brought high-profile player disciplinary cases before the FA, which brought the question of punishment versus rehabilitation into the public eye. These cases were milestones precisely because they generated full investigations, published decisions and appeals—making them a richer source base for historians.

Phase 3: Education as co-sentence (2010s–2026)

From the 2010s onwards, the FA and other national associations increasingly paired bans and fines with mandatory education programmes. The Borggräfe ruling is the latest example in which the offender is both punished and required to undertake rehabilitative learning. This hybrid approach reflects evolving policy priorities: deterrence, accountability, and transformative education.

Patterns in sanctions: what the records show

When you map decisions across decades, four persistent patterns emerge.

• Heterogeneous penalties: sanctions range from short stadium bans and small fines to multi-match suspensions and substantial fines. The FA has lacked a simple, transparent tariff that maps offence types to predictable penalties.
• Profile effects: high-profile players and incidents attract longer, more publicised processes—often producing more comprehensive records that are easier to cite in scholarship.
• Education as a common add-on: by the 2010s most racism-related disciplinary outcomes included some educative element, from online modules to bespoke workshops.
• Inconsistent documentation: older cases often lack full hearings or published rationale, which complicates comparative historical analysis.

Why documentation matters

Without systematic, machine-readable disciplinary archives, it is difficult to evaluate whether sanctions reduce repeat offending or whether education programmes deliver behavioural change. Researchers and policymakers need standardized records to assess effectiveness.

Recidivism: what the evidence and archives say

Recidivism—repeat racist behaviour by the same individuals—is a key metric for evaluating disciplinary systems. The archives show mixed results.

At the individual level, some high-profile offenders have reappeared in disciplinary notes for different kinds of misconduct. At the institutional level, repeat incidents within clubs or fan groups point to systemic culture rather than isolated misdeeds. The crucial difficulty is that outcomes of education programmes are rarely published in a systematic way; most records note only that a participant "completed" a course, not whether follow-up assessment found sustained change.

Implications for researchers

• Look for longitudinal indicators: repeat charges, subsequent complaints, and incident reports over a 3–5 year window.
• Cross-reference club-level disciplinary registers with national FA decisions to identify clusters of repeat behaviour.
• Request education-completion documentation under archival access policies, while respecting privacy redactions where legally required.

The education imperative: what works and what doesn’t

Education is no panacea, but the archival record and recent programme evaluations point to features that increase likelihood of impact.

Effective programme features

• Mandatory, evidence-based content: programmes should combine implicit bias training, historical context on race and sport, and concrete behavioural strategies for teammates and managers. Designers can experiment with guided learning tools—for example, self-directed modules or platforms like Gemini-guided learning—so long as content is evidence-based and assessed.
• Facilitated reflection: short online modules are useful for access, but workshops with skilled facilitators encourage personal reflection and accountability.
• Restorative elements: opportunities for mediated dialogue—when safe and agreed by affected parties—can be powerful when combined with apology and restitution.
• Assessment and follow-up: completion certificates alone are inadequate. Effective programmes use pre/post assessments, three- and six-month follow-up checks, and tie future eligibility for selection to demonstrable progress.

The FA’s current stance and the Borggräfe model

In Borggräfe’s case the FA imposed a multi-match ban concurrent with a mandated education course. This reflects a contemporary model: sanction + education. What’s missing from most published decisions is measurable follow-up—whether the education produced sustained attitude or behavioural shifts. That gap is precisely where archives and researchers can provide value.

Archives and documentation: building usable disciplinary records

As an archival practitioner or teacher creating classroom materials, you can push for standards that make the FA’s disciplinary history more useful.

Metadata every case file should include

1. Date of incident and date of decision
2. Nature of the offence as charged (precise wording)
3. Type and source of evidence (audio, witness statements, match footage)
4. Sanction(s) applied (ban length, fines, other penalties)
5. Education requirement: programme name, content outline, delivery mode
6. Completion status and any available follow-up assessment
7. Appeal outcomes and legal findings, if any
8. Redaction status and reason ( GDPR privacy protections, safeguarding, pending litigation)

Technical recommendations for public archives

• Publish machine-readable case lists (CSV/JSON) alongside human-readable summaries.
• Include persistent identifiers for each case so researchers can cite them reliably; consider the underlying hosting and API strategy used by modern archives as discussed in enterprise cloud design notes like evolution of enterprise cloud architectures.
• Provide a searchable taxonomy for offence types and sanctions.
• Create an anonymized research dataset that protects privacy but allows statistical analysis of sanction patterns.

Legal & ethical considerations

Archivists must balance transparency with legal requirements: defamation risk, GDPR privacy protections for individuals (especially minors), and safeguarding sensitive content. Redaction is sometimes necessary, but should be documented clearly so researchers understand what was removed and why.

Practical, actionable advice for five audiences

For researchers and students

• Start with published FA decisions and match them with club disciplinary registers and media reports to reconstruct incidents.
• Use FOI and archive access requests to obtain tribunal transcripts and evidence summaries where permitted; combine those requests with field recording best-practices—interview and oral-history recording gear is reviewed in practical field guides like best microphones & cameras for memory-driven streams.
• Build a reproducible dataset: date, offence, sanction, education requirement, completion status.

For teachers and curriculum designers

• Introduce case-based learning: assign students to map a disciplinary case from incident to sanction and evaluate the educational follow-up.
• Use Borggräfe’s case to teach about evidence, witness accounts and institutional responses without sensationalism.
• Incorporate archival literacy: how to read redactions, use metadata, and triangulate media sources with official records.

For clubs and coaches

• Create internal incident logs that mirror the metadata above so clubs can track whether education measures work.
• Commission or co-deliver facilitated restorative sessions after disciplinary findings where appropriate.
• Make completion of programmes a condition for selection—apply this clearly and fairly; integrate these operational needs with club systems and case-management tools and consider operational playbooks like cloud-native workflow and ops guidance when designing secure record-keeping.

For policy-makers and governing bodies

• Standardize a disciplinary tariff with clear ranges for racist language, threats, and discriminatory conduct so decisions are predictable and comparable.
• Require published follow-up outcomes for mandated education, with anonymized summary statistics updated annually; advocacy groups and researchers pushing for better discoverability can draw on digital PR and discoverability playbooks such as digital PR + social search.
• Invest in independent evaluation of educational interventions to determine which modules produce measurable behavioural change.

For archivists and digital curators

• Create cross-referenced collections that combine disciplinary files, club minutes, and media coverage to provide context for each case.
• Adopt open metadata standards and provide APIs so educators and researchers can build tools and visualizations.
• Maintain clear redaction logs and preserve original unredacted materials under restricted access for accredited researchers; plan any large-scale digitization or hosting migration with multi-cloud strategies like the multi-cloud migration playbook.

Recent trends (late 2025–early 2026) and what they mean

Across the sport landscape in late 2025 and early 2026 there are three notable trends:

• Greater insistence on education: governing bodies increasingly mandate education alongside bans. Borggräfe’s case exemplifies that shift; many organisations now experiment with e-learning modules and local blended programmes.
• Pressure for transparency: advocacy groups and academics are pushing for public disciplinary registries and annual reporting of outcomes.
• Technological solutions: clubs and associations are trialling digital case management systems and e-learning modules that enable monitoring, assessment and certification.

These trends suggest a policy environment that favours hybrid responses: clear sanctions to signal unacceptability, coupled with structured education intended to change behaviour. The crucial test in 2026 and beyond will be whether education is measurable and whether archives record those measures.

Future predictions: where the archives will take us by 2030

Based on current 2026 trajectories, expect the following by 2030:

• Standardized disciplinary taxonomies adopted across major associations, making cross-national research easier.
• Public dashboards reporting sanctions and anonymized education completion rates.
• Independent, peer-reviewed assessments of education modules that show which approaches reduce recidivism.
• More robust restorative pathways embedded in disciplinary processes where affected parties can opt in.

Case study: reading Borggräfe against the archive

Take Borggräfe’s ban as an example exercise for students:

1. Collect all public documents: the FA ruling, club statement, mainstream media coverage and any social media statements.
2. Note the metadata: incident date, hearing date, sanction length, education requirement.
3. Compare the sanction to precedent cases of similar wording and context; flag any deviation in penalty severity or additional requirements.
4. Design a simple follow-up plan to measure outcomes: three-month and six-month checks with teammates and staff on behaviour, and any related complaints.

This exercise highlights how even a single contemporary decision can illuminate archival gaps and policy strengths.

Limitations and responsible use of records

Be clear-eyed about limits. Not all incidents will be made public, and privacy law may prevent full access to certain materials. Where records are partial, triangulate with oral histories and club minutes. Always handle sensitive materials ethically: obtain informed consent for interviews, and respect redaction decisions in archive files.

Conclusion: the moral and archival case for integrated sanctions and transparency

The FA’s decision on Rafaela Borggräfe is a reminder that contemporary football governance prefers a twin-track approach: punitive sanction plus mandated education. That model reflects an understanding that discipline alone cannot transform cultural habits. But its promise will only be fulfilled if disciplinary archives are improved: standardized, transparent and research-ready.

For students, teachers and researchers, the task is practical and urgent: build datasets, demand access, and evaluate programmes. For clubs and governing bodies, the work is operational: ensure education is evidence-based, assessed and linked to selection policies. For archivists, the mission is technical and ethical: make records usable while protecting privacy.

Actionable next steps

• Researchers: request FA case transcripts or appeal summaries where available and build a public dataset of sanction patterns.
• Teachers: create a case-study module that uses Borggräfe’s ruling to teach archival methods and ethics.
• Clubs: institute mandatory follow-up assessments 3 and 6 months after any education mandate.
• Archivists: publish a machine-readable index of disciplinary cases with standardized metadata fields.

Call to action

If you research or teach sport history, help us map the FA’s disciplinary archive. Contribute by requesting access to case files, submitting redaction logs from club records, or partnering with local archives to digitize disciplinary decisions. If you work for a club or governing body, publish your disciplinary indexes and outcome statistics. The evidence we create today will determine whether sanctions become mere headlines or real instruments of change.

Start now: download our archival metadata template from the Historical Website resource hub (archives > disciplinary-templates), use it to catalogue one FA case this month, and share your anonymized dataset with the community for peer review.

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