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Roberto De Zerbi apologised in his first interview as Tottenham’s head coach for past comments about Mason Greenwood when the forward was his player at Marseille. Spurs supporter groups, including Proud Lilywhites and Women of the Lane, both of which I co-founded, were among those who criticised him. De Zerbi said he had never meant to downplay male violence against women. (Greenwood denied charges of attempted rape, controlling and coercive behaviour and assault occasioning actual bodily harm in 2022 and the case was discontinued.)
That he responded at all matters. Silence from men in positions of power on these issues is its own problem, and I would rather see someone engage than retreat. But what the response offered was self-description rather than accountability. And in this context, that is not enough. I will come to that.
The conversation around De Zerbi and Greenwood has in some ways been welcome because it put the question of male violence against women back at the centre of football’s public discourse, and with it a harder question: why do so many men either not recognise harmful behaviour for what it is, or recognise it and say nothing? If we want things to change, we need to be honest about how this works.
The ‘good guy’ problem
One of the most consistent findings in research on male perpetrators of sexual and domestic violence is the displacement of blame. A 2024 review published in Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, which synthesised qualitative research on male perpetrators across four decades, found that men who had perpetrated serious harm rarely identified themselves as perpetrators. Blame is attributed to the victim, to alcohol, to being out of character, to circumstance. The label of “rapist” or “abuser” is resisted because it conflicts with the self-image of someone who considers himself a decent person.
This tells us something about why the “I know him, he’s a good person” response is so common and inadequate. Perpetrators are not, in most cases, strangers. They are not monsters. They are people others know, like and want to defend. This is why character references, however sincerely offered, do not address the question. What a person is like in other contexts is not the point.
How harmful behaviour gets normalised
Male violence against women does not exist in isolation but within a set of norms that shape what gets seen, named and let go. The World Health Organization, alongside decades of academic research on gender and masculinity, consistently identifies these norms, rather than individual pathology, as the root cause. As the researcher Michael Flood has argued, violence against women is not a problem of bad men in isolation. It is produced and sustained by cultures that treat certain behaviours as unremarkable.
The vast majority of men are not perpetrators of physical violence. But research also consistently shows that men are significantly more likely than women to view sexist comments, jokes or banter as having some level of acceptability. That gap matters. Because in that gap a great deal of damage is done.
Football is not immune to this. The dressing room is not a neutral space. Research on professional sport settings, including work carried out in the Australian Football League and more recently in UK football through the Football Onside programme (Exeter University), shows that strong group cultures in sport can inhibit men from speaking up, partly out of fear of being seen as weak, difficult or disloyal to the group. The pressure to conform to perceived group norms is real, even when those norms are not as widely shared as people assume.
What men might have done and not know it
This is the part that is hardest to say, and most necessary. Coercive control, recognised in law in England and Wales, often involves behaviour that the person doing it does not classify as abuse: pressuring a partner; monitoring their movements; making them feel responsible for your emotional state; isolating them from friends and family. Many men have engaged in elements of this without understanding it was harmful, because they were never taught to see it that way.
Research on sexual coercion consistently finds that many men who have pressured a partner or ignored refusals do not categorise their behaviour as sexual violence. A 2023 study published in the Journal of Sex Research found that men are capable of understanding refusals but perform naivete about their use of coercion, continuing to frame coercive acts as consensual. This is not simply miscommunication. It reflects the cultural scripts men absorb, which position persistence as normal seduction, and women’s resistance as a negotiating position. The gap in understanding is produced by a culture that does not educate men adequately about consent, coercion or the impact of their behaviour. That is something we can change.
What ownership actually looks like
This is where De Zerbi’s response becomes a useful illustration. He said something, and that matters. “In my life, I have always stood up for those who are more vulnerable, more fragile. I’ve consistently fought and taken a stand to be on the side of those who are most at risk,” he said. Silence from men in positions of power on these issues is a problem. But the response fell short of what the moment required.
Genuine ownership requires three things: naming what was wrong with what was said, not what feelings it caused but what it communicated; accepting that impact exists independently of intent; and saying clearly, without qualification, that it will not happen again.
What De Zerbi offered instead was a character reference for himself. These statements may have been sincere. They did not address what was said or why it landed the way it did. The research on perpetration and normalisation tells us that many men do not understand the impact of what they have said or done because the culture they grew up in did not equip them to see it. None of this means De Zerbi is beyond learning or change. That is why ownership and unequivocal atonement speak volumes when they happen. They signal that someone has done the harder work of understanding impact rather than defending intent.
That is what we did not see here. Naming that clearly is not about piling on. It is about being honest about what good looks like, because that is the only way we get more of it.
If De Zerbi had made these comments as a manager in any other industry, they would barely have registered. Football is a lightning rod. It reaches into communities, living rooms and workplaces in a way almost nothing else does.
What players, managers and clubs say and do, what they defend and what they challenge, shapes attitudes, particularly among young men. The research on this is consistent: men are more likely to change their behaviour when they hear concerns raised by other men they respect. Peer influence in male-dominated environments is powerful. Football has that influence in abundance.
The heat generated by this appointment, the fan groups, the statements, the media coverage, the debate, none of that would have happened if it wasn’t football. That heat has put male violence against women on the front pages of sports coverage in a way that a policy document never would.
What stepping up actually looks like
Men stepping up is not about performative allyship or statements of solidarity. It is about the smaller, harder, more frequent choices. Challenging a comment in the dressing room. Not laughing at a joke that degrades women. Being honest with a friend about behaviour you have witnessed. Listening when a woman tells you something made her uncomfortable, rather than explaining why she has misread the situation.
It is also about men with power and platform using them. When high-profile figures in football stay silent on these issues, their silence is a statement.
The De Zerbi situation has generated a lot of heat. Underneath that heat is a question that the game needs to sit with seriously. Not just who we appoint, but what we teach, what we tolerate and what we expect of men at every level of the game. This conversation was uncomfortable. It was also necessary. The question now is what the game does with it.
