Norwich City academy player Josh Giurgi, who was born in Ireland and has Romanian parents, uses Black History Month to share his experiences surrounding discrimination.
My parents are from Romania, but I was born in Ireland. I started playing football in Ireland at schoolboy level, playing at a local club. At the time, when you’re young, there’s no real discrimination because no-one knows what’s going on as a young kid. That was when I was about five years old.
But then, as I got a bit older, until like 11 and 12, the school was different, the boys were older, and they knew a few more things about me. That’s when the first signs of racial discrimination came towards where I’m from and where my parents are from.
I never raised that. I said it to my parents, but I never raised it in school for action to be taken. My parents said ‘listen, there’s no point, you just have to laugh it off.’
Some of them were just comments, people thinking it was a bit of banter, but it gets to a point where it’s not banter.
They were comments about where I’m from, and people relating things to where I’m from. For example, if there was a video of someone online, they’d say ‘this was in your hometown’ or stuff like that, when it actually wasn’t.
I feel very strongly about standing up to racism and I always, when we take the knee, think that’s a really important thing to do to show that this matter shouldn’t take place and it shouldn’t be allowed in football or in the world in general. It shouldn’t happen anywhere.
At Norwich, we have workshops, talks and seminars about this. When I was playing back home in Ireland for my old team before I moved over here, a lot of my teammates were black and every single day I was training with them and playing matches with them.
Andrew Omobamidele was one of my teammates back home and I was around him all the time. I didn’t see those guys as anything other than my friends and my teammates, not how other people who racially abuse them would see them.
They were my best mates and I stood up for them. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. This is what we need to do to stop this and bring equality into every sport and everyone.
A lot of players now, like Marcus Rashford, have started campaigning, but I definitely think that more can be done.
Josh Giurgi