Stray Wasp
Registered User
If one knows where to look one can find the whole article online. I could post a translation here but I'm afraid it is against the rules to re-post material from behind paywalls.
The article is lazy and stupid. It would just be a bland recounting of the fact that Burnley are the surprise team of the year, a little bit of history on the club, some quotes from the team captain, some commentary on the manager (poorly researched at that, Chesterfield was in the FA Cup semifinal in 1997 not 1987 as the article says). The kind of blurb you might find on a random sports website. If it wasn't for the fact that it was 'enriched' with a bunch of stereotypes about the provincial English while written in as condescending a way as possible. The points about race and Brexit are pointless, they serve no wider role in the article other than to make it clear that we - the author and his readers - are supposed to look down on Burnley as a club and town.
30 odd years ago you may have seen articles written this way about African footballers, but it's difficult to imagine anyone today giving us their colorful impressions of the physique of Africans the way Duluc explores the supposed looks of Brits.
A serious and intelligent article perhaps would have explored the miracle that is Burnley being in the Premiership in the first place. A club from a small city that's been economically troubled for decades. No Red Bull, no sheikhs or Russian oligarchs in sight. What money there is comes from local businessmen. Burnley are perhaps unique among the rich man's toys and foreign investment holdings that can be found in the Premier League and investigating that is fine and could be the backbone of a solid article.
But almost everything that Duluc sneers at could also be seen as admirable and something to be emulated by other clubs. Duluc's negativity is solely based on prejudice and his own bias. While Duluc does not have to write positively about Burnley, we should be able to expect him to write fairly about them. He fails on that count in such a significant way that it's fair to conclude he's a bit of a knobhead.
I was ignorant of the rules about quoting stuff from behind paywalls, so much obliged for the summary.
It bears mentioning that a similar-themed article appeared in the Independent newspaper on 22 December 2017. I believe anyone can access the link below.
Burnley, Brexit and Britishness: how a club represents society's split
I know the site is queasy about politics (for understandable reasons), but I beg the mods' indulgence to make one point. You'd never guess from the above article- or indeed from UK media coverage in general- that the traditional power base of anti-EU sentiment in the country was southern England. Indeed, I wonder how many articles about Southampton mention the club represents a city that voted to leave the EU by a 7.5 point margin?