‘All-white league’ and the myth of ‘doctors and engineers’ from Africa: Anti-immigration rhetoric and online discourses of racism in Czech football

This article analyses Czech online football discourse surrounding a transnational racism incident in European competition involving a Czech club and a Danish player of African descent. Drawing on comments from Czech media platforms and social networks, it identifies four recurrent narratives: colour-blindness and denial of racism, colonial exceptionalism and ‘reverse racism’, downplaying and humourisation, and anti-immigration rhetoric. The analysis reveals how ‘whiteness’ is maintained as the unmarked norm of belonging and how racialised athletes are imagined as legitimate or illegitimate within Czech football discourse. The findings contribute to scholarship on online racism, sport migration and football in Czechia and the broader Central and Eastern European region by showing how online fan discourse extends political anxieties about migration into football and reproduces symbolic boundaries of belonging.