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13 June 2026The case of referee Omar Artan and what scientific research really says about acceptance
Sport Psychology Center · sportpsychologycenter.com
In June 2026, two images flashed across the board in the space of a few days. On the one hand, Omar Artan, a 34-year-old Somali referee, awarded the title of best African referee of 2025 and included by FIFA among the designated officials for the World Cup: he was held up for a long time at immigration checks upon arrival in the United States and then sent back, effectively excluded from the tournament. On the other, UEFA, which, a few days later, called him to referee the European Super Cup on August 12 in Salzburg, with a clear motivation from president Aleksander Čeferin: "Football is about bringing people together."
In the background, at the same time, the streets of Belfast were erupting in days of anti-migrant violence, sparked by a serious news story. Three different frames that convey the same underlying tension: the drive to exclude those we perceive as "other" and sport's ability to heal. For those who study sports psychology, this isn't just news: it's an open-air laboratory of some of the most studied mechanisms in the social sciences.
Why is it so easy to divide the world into "us" and "them"?
Categorizing is an automatic and economical mental operation: our brain simplifies social complexity by grouping people into categories. Social identity theory has shown how, once the boundary between the "group I belong to" (in-group) and the "group of others" (out-group) has been drawn, we almost inevitably tend to favor the former and view the latter with greater suspicion. Deep hatred isn't necessary: the category is enough.
It's this automatism that explains how a single incident can quickly turn into a collective enemy, and how fear can turn into hostility toward an entire community. The good news is that the same cognitive flexibility that traces those boundaries can also redraw them. And this is where sport comes in.
Contact that reduces prejudice: over seventy years of evidence
In 1954, psychologist Gordon Allport formulated the contact hypothesis: under the right conditions, direct contact between members of different groups reduces mutual prejudice. The idea was debated for decades, until Pettigrew and Tropp's (2006) meta-analysis — 515 studies, over 250,000 participants — confirmed its robustness: intergroup contact is reliably associated with less hostility (average effect r = −.21), a result that proved surprisingly universal, cutting across ages, genders, and cultures.
Allport identified four conditions that favor this effect: equal status between the groups in the situation, common goals, cooperation, and the support of recognized institutions or authorities. Subsequent research clarified an important point: these conditions facilitate the outcome but are not essential—contact tends to work even when not all of them are present.
But how does it work? A second meta-analysis by Pettigrew and Tropp (2008) isolated three mechanisms: contact increases mutual knowledge, reduces anxiety toward the other group, and increases empathy and the ability to take another's point of view. The two emotional factors—less anxiety, more empathy—outweigh knowledge alone. And this is exactly what happens in a locker room: people share the effort, they trust each other in decisive moments, they learn to read the other.
From the shirt to the expanded "we"
Gaertner and Dovidio's model of shared in-group identity adds a crucial piece. When people from different backgrounds begin to share a goal—winning together, wearing the same colors—mental boundaries shift: "us and them" becomes a broader "us." This is the phenomenon of recategorization. The team is perhaps the most efficient social device for producing it: a jersey, a common goal, a shared destiny.
A detail the research emphasizes: recategorizing oneself doesn't mean erasing one's origins. A dual identity works better, in which one feels fully part of the team without giving up one's history, culture, or belonging. Sport, at its best, doesn't ask to disappear: it asks to play together while remaining true to oneself.
A necessary clarification: sport is not inclusive « by nature »
It would be dishonest to portray sport as an automatic solution. Recent systematic reviews of the use of sport for the integration of disadvantaged groups—migrants, refugees, minorities—show a more nuanced picture: sport can include but also exclude. In highly competitive contexts, it can even reinforce stigma, and participation in multiethnic clubs alone is not enough to change attitudes toward the other group (Theeboom et al., 2012).
The message for those working in sports is clear and empowering: inclusion is not a guaranteed side effect, but the result of well-designed environments—where equal status is real, goals are truly shared, cooperation is structured, and the authority (coach, club, federation) openly supports the value of acceptance. These are, once again, Allport's conditions. Not magic: method.
UEFA's gesture, interpreted through psychology
It is precisely here that we understand the significance of the decision to entrust Artan with the European Super Cup. Beyond his human value, it is an almost textbook example of Allport's ultimate condition: the support of authority. When a recognized institution publicly legitimizes inclusion, it doesn't just make a symbolic gesture: it shifts the social norm, signals what is acceptable and what is not, and offers a model of behavior to millions of people.
It's the exact reverse of the dynamic seen in Belfast. Where collective fear creates an enemy, a sports authority can remind us—with a concrete and visible gesture—that merit and competence have no passport. This isn't a partisan political stance: it's the practical translation of what research has documented for seventy years.
Finding balance and acceptance
Sport alone doesn't resolve social fractures, and it would be naive to pretend it does. But it offers something rare: a space where contact, cooperation, and shared goals occur naturally, with high emotional intensity and on a large scale. It's a training ground for coexistence, where we can learn to reduce anxiety toward others, increase empathy, and transform the "them" into an "us" without erasing anyone. For the sports psychologist, this opens up a specific task: helping clubs, coaches, and athletes build those environments—not leave them to chance. Because acceptance, when the conditions are right, isn't a good intention: it's a measurable result. And in weeks like this, remembering this isn't rhetoric. It's science applied to the field.
Scientific references
Allport, G. W. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Addison-Wesley.
Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2006). A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(5), 751–783.
Pettigrew, T. F., & Tropp, L. R. (2008). How does intergroup contact reduce prejudice? Meta-analytic tests of three mediators. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38(6), 922–934.
Gaertner, S. L., Dovidio, J. F., Anastasio, P. A., Bachman, B. A., & Rust, M. C. (1993). The common ingroup identity model: Recategorization and the reduction of intergroup bias. European Review of Social Psychology, 4(1), 1–26.
Gaertner, S. L., & Dovidio, J. F. (2000). Reducing Intergroup Bias: The Common Ingroup Identity Model. Psychology Press.
Theeboom, M., Schaillée, H., & Nols, Z. (2012). Social capital development among ethnic minorities in mixed and separate sport clubs. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 47(1), 1–21.
Note on current events
The incidents cited (the appointment of Omar Artan for the UEFA Super Cup after being excluded from the 2026 World Cup, and the Belfast riots of June 2026) have been verified by primary news sources (UEFA, Sky Sport, Ansa, Il Post, Eurosport).
