That football is much more than just football is nothing new, despite Vujadin Boskov’s famous words. Football is economy, culture, politics, history… and an unexpected laboratory of sociological experiments that allow experts to study phenomena as complex as racism. This was also demonstrated a few years ago by a group of researchers who saw the transfer of Mohamed Salah to Liverpool FC as a unique opportunity to study Islamophobia and a complex yet interesting phenomenon: “parasocial contact”.

The conclusions they reach are surprising.

What is the use of a star signature? If we’re talking about football, the answer seems obvious: He will help his club win the championship. A few years ago, a group of sociologists and political scientists from the universities of Stanford, Yale and Colorado Boulder (UCB) wondered whether the addition of a new player to the team might have more academic applications, such as studying a phenomenon as complex and controversial as xenophobia.

His conclusion was yes. And they decided to focus on a specific case: the transfer of Mohamed Salah, a promising footballer of Egyptian origin who came to Liverpool Football Club from Associazione Sportiva Roma in June 2017.

Why this special case? Because Mohamed Salah’s case is an exceptional case in which so many factors come together that it almost seems designed by sociologists. He was born 32 years ago in Nagrig, Egypt, and he openly declares himself a Muslim, as European fans celebrate goals with prostration prayers or point their fingers to the sky while reciting this prayer on the pitch. martyrdomAs if these shows revealing his Islamic identity were not enough, Salah, who named his daughter after Mecca, the holiest place in Islam, is seen applauding his wife wearing a veil.

Is there anything else that makes this different? Yes, Salah, in addition to openly professing his religion, also stood out for another factor that was equally important to the sociologists who decided to study his case years ago: the Egyptian player quickly became a valuable part of the Liverpool squad. The Egyptian forward, who recently joined them, reached the Champions League final. They won the trophy just a year later, and in 2020 the club won the Premier League.

Proof of Salah’s role in these sporting successes is that he has won the First League Golden Boot award on several occasions and songs can be heard in the Liverpool stands praising his performances on the pitch, some even highlighting his Muslim faith.Mohamed Salah, gift from Allah“anyone”If he scores a few more goals, I will become a Muslim too“.

What did the researchers do? Ask yourself a simple yet definitive question that is hard to answer unequivocally: did Salah’s role at Liverpool in any way influence the xenophobic activity seen in the city or among Liverpool fans?

His sporting successes, the admiration and praise he created among fans… Did they reflect on his opposition to Islam? It was not easy to answer these questions with clear scientific criteria, so scientists from Stanford, Yale and UCB turned to the classic toolbox of sociology.

The researchers pored over hate crime reports in and around Liverpool, England, conducted surveys and examined nearly 15 million tweets from Premier League fans, including fans of Mohamed Salah’s team. The effort paid off. And the results are reflected in this: American Political Science Review.

Have hate crimes decreased? Yes. Researchers found that hate crimes in the Liverpool area fell by 16% after Salah joined Liverpool, compared with a control model (some references put the drop as high as 18.9% in the Merseyside county).

This is not the only indicator that has improved since the signing. Liverpool fans have also halved the rate of posting anti-Muslim messages on X and subsequently on Twitter. After Salah’s arrival, the rate of anti-Islam messages among Liverpool fans and Muslim references was 3.8%, compared to the expected 7.3% without the Egyptian.

So what did the fans think? Another test involved surveying nearly 8,000 Liverpool fans to find out whether Salah’s visibility had any bearing on their views of Muslims. Once again, the experts found themselves with telling data: belief that Islam was compatible with British values ​​had risen significantly, by five percentage points, from 18% in the control group to 23%.

“These results suggest that positive exposure to celebrities from extreme groups may reduce prejudice, especially when these celebrities’ membership in minority groups is highly salient,” the experts add.

What is the result? The enormous visibility that Mohamed Salah has achieved at Liverpool and the footballer’s open display of his faith have helped reduce religious prejudice. In a 2021 paper that they believe supports the “parasocial contact” hypothesis, the researchers state that “Salah’s Muslim identity allows positive feelings towards him to generalize to Muslims more broadly.” Essentially, they argue that positive images of minorities, such as those represented by Salah in this case, reduce prejudice.

Alexandra Siegel, a researcher at Stanford University and one of the authors of the study, explained some time ago that the experiment with Egyptians was interesting because of its impact on a very specific group. “This is a group of older British men who, according to public opinion data in the UK, are generally not supportive of Muslims.” It is hard to imagine a more coherent scenario than the one that was naturally created in the Liverpool environment with the arrival of Salah in the summer of 2017.

Did you continue your research? The research has created great anticipation, so much so that it has been covered by universities such as Stanford, Georgetown University Qatar, Colorado Boulder or UCLA, as well as media outlets such as The Economist and the Independent, or the official Premier League website.

The UCLA paper raised new questions: Is the “Salah effect” an isolated phenomenon that responds to specific circumstances, or can we expect it in other similar situations? If a star player like Salah stops scoring goals, does Islamophobia start? But outside his own club? After all, Salah was the victim of racist comments from Chelsea fans in 2019. Cases like Samuel Eto’s or, more recently, Vinicius’ show that xenophobia is not a problem unique to English football.

Image | Cchana (Flickr)

In Xataka | The current debate is whether Spain is racist: science has the answers but we must ask the right questions