Blog Post #5

Soccer is the most diverse sport in the world. It does not have barriers against ethnic backgrounds, forms of governments, or geographic locations. Almost everyone and anyone can play it. There are professional leagues in almost every country and the World Cup is a competition between the world's best national teams. In those ways, soccer represents the society Chaplin so deeply desired. It does have some flaws though. Every once in a while, fans get ridiculously obsessed over results or blindly furious about players performance. For example, on April 27, 2014, during a Spanish League match, a Villareal fan threw a banana at the opposing team's defender, Dani Alves, attempting to make a racist "monkey" joke. Alves, being a better person than the angry fan, picked up the banana and started eating it during the match. This is exactly the kind of thing Chaplin would approve of. People trying to insult others and others not accepting their rude behavior and turning it into something positive instead. The days following that event were filled with many other famous soccer players posting images in support of Dani Alves and his fight against racism. It is one great example of how racism in this world, and in the world of sports, is still present to this day, and how we can also find a way to put away those invisible barriers.