Where are all the Romani and Traveller sports stars?
23 December 2024
By Didicoy Jac
This article comes from the anti-racist fanzine ‘A Sporting Chance’, created by the ERRC in 2024 to highlight the experiences of Roma, Sinti, & Travellers fighting racism through sport as part of the EU-funded Moving On project.
Inspiring, if obscure, Romani sports personas from the turn of the century are all well and good. But considering the size of the Romani population in Europe (more than 12 million), particularly over the last few decades, oughtn’t we have had a few more Romani sports stars?
The reason of course, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, is antigypsyism: the specific form of racism directed at Roma, Sinti, Travellers and others ostracised by society as ‘gypsies’. The relatively low number of Romani or Traveller sports stars is an indictment of the historical and ongoing racism towards these ethnic groups in Europe today.
A Hungarian football manager once said that signing a Romani player was career suicide in Hungary. At the same time, outing yourself as a Romani or Traveller athlete in most sports (particularly football) is similarly unwise. European Championship Winning Portugal International, Ricardo Quaresma, endured plenty of anti-Roma sentiment as an openly Romani footballer playing in the Portuguese league as well as abroad. "I've never smoked, never drunk, never experimented [with drugs] nor have I ever wanted to. But there it is, because I'm Roma, I've got a reputation for being a lot of things in football" said Quaresma in 2016.
Survival leaves little time for anything else
The greatest barrier to sports for Romani and Traveller people is racialised poverty. Large numbers of Roma in Europe live in segregation; excluded by society and condemned to life in impoverished ghettos and villages without access to basic infrastructure, public transport, job opportunities, or sometimes even water and electricity. In such conditions, sport becomes less important. Playing games can seem frivolous and unnecessary when you’re struggling to survive.
In my own family, the curt survival wisdom that was passed on from my great-grandfather regarding time-consuming activities such as playing sports was: “there’s no money in it.” Thankfully this survival aphorism had faded from practice by the time I came around, and I was born into a family for whom running for the local athletics club, playing rugby, football, martial arts, and other sports was completely normalised for girls and boys.
There is obviously a direct link between social mobility and sport participation. Romani and Traveller people from working class families who have some economic stability can pursue sporting interests. For the larger number of Roma trapped in segregated neighbourhoods, without basic facilities, poor education, and limited prospects to get out, sport is for them (as it was for my great-grandfather) a luxurious waste of time and money. And yet, despite the history of antigypsyism on our continent there has been, and continues to be, a proud tradition of Romani and Traveller athletes in elite level sport. These athletes have managed to overcome the odds and make it to the highest level despite the barriers in front of them.
O Shukar Khelipe – the Beautiful Game
Football is the world’s sport. Over a quarter of a billion people in more than 200 countries and territories regularly play football. According to FIFA, an estimated five billion spectators watch the beautiful game globally. It is perhaps surprising then that the sport most associated with Roma, Sinti, and Travellers is probably boxing and not football. However, on reflection this makes a lot of sense. The scale and cultural enormity of football is unlike any other sport on the planet. Football is such a part of our societies, particularly in Europe, that it absorbs and reflects our values in ways no other sport can. So, it is not surprising that the prejudice and institutional racism played out daily in our society is also played out in our football clubs, fanbases, and terrace cultures.
Regardless, there are still a great number of known footballers from Romani and Traveller backgrounds. Portugal’s Ricardo Quaresma has been the most vocal Romani player of recent times, but he is joined by the likes of: French international, Toulouse and Marseille striker, Andre Pierre Gignac; Czech international and former Liverpool striker, Milan Baroš; the late Spanish international and Arsenal, Atlético Madrid, and Sevilla winger, José Antonio Reyes; and Croatian Captain and Dinamo Zagreb and AC Milan midfielder, Zvonimir Boban. The latter was even UEFA’s Chief of Football for a time, before resigning over his stated ‘moral beliefs’ and dismay at the technocracy and corruption in the governing body.
There are fewer Travellers in football. England international, Jonjo Shelvey, is one with both Scottish and Irish Traveller heritage who spent most of his footballing career at Charlton Athletic, Liverpool, Swansea City (pride of Wales), and Newcastle United. In the women’s game, the Irish international and Shamrock Rovers defender Savannah McCarthy is the only out Traveller currently playing.
As concerns Romani and Traveller footballers, these people are some of the known knowns (to shoehorn in Donald Rumsfeld’s tortured epistemological soundbite on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq). But there are rumours aplenty about the far greater number of known unknowns; that is, the likelihood of many Romani and Traveller players who choose to keep quiet about their identity in public. Some of the definitely maybe’s (not in the 1994 studio album sense) include greats of the game like Hristo Stoichkov, Gheorghe Hagi, and Eric Cantona. Some of the more un-likely lads (not sure where I’m going with the offbeat references) that are rumoured to have Romani or Traveller roots include players like Wayne Rooney and Zlatan Ibrahimovic (both of whom have faced racist ‘gypsy’ chants), and even Saudi Arabia’s greatest ever league player: the Al Nassr Super-Star, Cristiano Ronaldo.
Combat sports: the great equaliser
Boxing and other martial arts are sports where Roma, Sinti, and Travellers have long excelled alongside ethnic minority groups the world over. These are physically demanding, tough, individual sports with gyms that leave little room for the indecencies of racial prejudice. Dojos, academies, and gyms devoted to combat sports tend to be multi-racial bastions of sporting meritocracy. Where you come from doesn’t matter, as long as you train hard and fight hard.
Modern boxing greats include the 2014 middleweight champion, Andy Lee, who was the first Traveller to win a major boxing title; English Romanichal fighter Billy Joe Saunders, who became the first Romani or Traveller boxer to win world championships in two weight classes in 2015 and 2019; the Bulgarian Romani Olympic light flyweight champion, Ivailo Marinov; the Irish Traveller and Olympic bantamweight silver medallist from Mullingar, John Joe Nevin; and of course the greatest – Tyson Fury, ‘the Gypsy King’ and ‘the People’s Champion’, who has held multiple titles as the heavyweight-champion-of the-world and is widely considered to be one of the greatest boxers alive.
Missing generations of Romani & Traveller athletes
Considering the level of antigypsyism and the size of the Romani population in Europe, how many young would-be sports stars slip through the cracks every generation because of racism and social exclusion? Without the infrastructure to allow kids to access sports, only a small few blessed with the combination of good fortune and exceptional talent will be able to overcome the barriers placed in front of them on account of their ethnicity. Even then, they may understandably choose to hide their background if they are able, further denying communities representation and role models that others take for granted. While we await the revolution, we’ll continue to champion the Tyson’s and the Cantona’s, the Quaresma’s and the Marinov’s, and all the Romani and Traveller greats who have made it against the odds.
