Sport and swearing: It's ****ing complicated

“F*** OFF-F*** YOU.”

Spanish TV show El Chiringuito can be quite a strange and chaotic experience at the best of times, but it entered a new realm of surrealism last weekend as they discussed the nuances of English profanity.

They dedicated two hours to discussing Jude Bellingham’s red card for Real Madrid against Osasuna, dismissed for swearing at referee Jose Luis Munuera Montero. The debate was not about whether Bellingham had used a rude word, but how he phrased it and the intention behind it.

Was, as Carlo Ancelotti claimed, “f*** off” much less serious and offensive than “f*** you”? Language experts were consulted, solemn arguments had, brows were furrowed, everyone treated the whole thing awfully seriously. On another highlights show, the offending phrases were emblazoned across the bottom of the screen, as if they were news flashes or score updates.

Crying 😂 pic.twitter.com/fUEVT0gnbm

— Sid Lowe (@sidlowe) February 16, 2025

Regardless of exactly what Bellingham said or what sentiment he intended to convey, it’s the latest example of sport’s curiously puritanical relationship with fruity language.

In Formula One, new rules are being introduced this season that could result in championship points deductions for repeated ‘misconduct violations’, which includes swearing in press conferences and interviews. The first violation will result in a fine of €40,000 (£34,000; $42,000), the second will cost you €80,000, and the third will see any driver €120,000 poorer. This is already a hell of a swear jar, but the third strike will also come with a suspension and the docking of points.

The world title could be decided by a few misplaced curse words, an absurd but plausible scenario that indicates everyone needs to grow up a little. An entire year’s work down the drain for the sake of a few f***s or s***s.

“You need to use a bit of common sense,” reigning world champion and noted potty mouth Max Verstappen told a pre-race press conference last year. “I prefer that we actually focus on other topics — to try to improve safety, try to improve the overall performance of Formula One cars — instead of actually having to focus on all these things. It’s a bit unnecessary.”

Swearing has a fine tradition in sport. Another Englishman in Madrid, David Beckham, had seen the shine fade from his golden balls in 2004 thanks to lurid stories about his private life, but he received his first red card in Spain for calling a linesman a “hijo de puta”. That literally translates as ‘son of a b****’, but is considered rather more offensive in Spain than it typically would be in the Anglophone world.

Sir Alex Ferguson was a keen swearer and while his adult language was typically reserved for the fabled hairdryer treatment aimed at errant players or managerial rivals on the touchline, occasionally it would slip into the public domain. Most notably when he upbraided some journalists who were less than enthusiastic about Juan Sebastian Veron’s performances after signing for Manchester United in 2001, telling the dissenting media “yous are all f***ing idiots”.

Across town, Roberto Mancini produced one of the genre’s funnier examples on the final, dramatic day of the 2011-12 season. With Manchester City needing to beat Queens Park Rangers to win the Premier League, things were not going to plan when Jamie Mackie put the visitors 2-1 up, to which Mancini reacted by storming around his technical area bellowing “F*** YOU! F*** YOU! F*** YOU!” at nobody in particular. Could have been his players, could have been the QPR players, could have been his coaches, could have been the Almighty for ruining his big day.

In the 1970s, Brian Clough, an inveterate swearer himself behind the scenes, had nonetheless become irked at the bad language coming from the terraces at Nottingham Forest, to the point that he displayed a large sign before one game that read, “Gentlemen, no swearing, please — Brian.” When Clough was in contention for the England job a short while later, the fans responded with a sign of their own: “Brian, no leaving please — the Gentlemen.”

Brian Clough’s famous message to the Nottingham Forest fans after a bout of bad language at the City Ground! #NFFC pic.twitter.com/haK2CgzGFX

— Terrace Images (@TerraceImages) September 20, 2015

Beyond football, one of the more notorious and ultimately costly sweary outbursts came from Serena Williams during the 2009 US Open semi-final. The officials took a dim view of her when she became frustrated at being repeatedly called for foot faults, shouting “I swear to God I’ll f***ing take the ball and shove it down your f***ing throat” at a line judge.

Admittedly the punishment might have been more for the apparent threat than the taboo language, but she was docked a point — which happened to be match point, handing the win to a bemused Kim Clijsters — and later fined $10,500 (£6,300 at the time).

Serena Williams has a calm exchange of words with U.S. Open head referee Brian Earley after being penalised (Timothy A Clary/Getty Images)

More generally, players can be sanctioned for an ‘audible obscenity’ on court and in some cases, it can result in them forfeiting a match. At the DC Open last year, Denis Shapovalov was defaulted for directing an F-bomb at a spectator during a match against Ben Shelton.

GO DEEPER

Denis Shapovalov ‘did not sleep’ after default for swearing at Washington Open

Cricket, despite its historical reputation as a genteel sport, has a long and proud tradition of swearing, mostly in the form of ‘sledging’ (trash talk, essentially), such as when then-Australia captain Michael Clarke told England’s Jimmy Anderson to “prepare for a broken f***ing arm”. The authorities will be on your case if you’re caught cursing: a few years ago, Australian batter Travis Head was fined 15 per cent of his match fee for swearing in frustration at himself, not even at an opponent or an official.

Your F and C words are jarring to enough people that apologies are usually required when broadcast microphones pick up the odd expletive. Or, indeed, when an emotional player lets one slip in a post-match interview: this most recently happened after Plymouth Argyle beat Liverpool in the FA Cup and their defender Nikola Katic expressed his joy in robust terms, live on ITV. Interestingly, the interviewer, Gabriel Clarke, let it slide and it was left to the studio presenter to hurriedly say sorry.

Broadcasters aren’t apologising because they are necessarily excessively puritanical about language, but for the much more practical reason that regulators would fine them if they didn’t.

The pandemic presented its own problems when it came to this sort of thing: with empty stadiums, it didn’t matter how much fake crowd noise the broadcasters pumped in, the odd bad word made it through, causing sheepishness aplenty.

“Oooh, OK,” said Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster Joe Davis after a particularly heated moment in a game against the Houston Astros in July 2020 had led to the microphones picking up quite a strong curse word. “So in empty stadiums, we pick up some things we don’t normally pick up. Apologies for whoever the potty mouth is.”

Joe Davis of Dodgers TV was forced to apologise for players swearing during the Covid-19 pandemic (Jack Gorman/Getty Images)

So why do we swear? Why, in certain circumstances, will only a word that your mother would smack you around the head with a rolled-up magazine for using do? “People use swearing essentially as catharsis,” says Dr Robbie Love, senior lecturer in English language and linguistics at Aston University, who specialises in the linguistics of swearing. “To express frustration or anger or surprise or joy, you know, any sort of extreme emotion.”

Furthermore, for sportspeople, it could improve athletic performance. No, really. Academic research says so.

A review of studies published in Frontiers in Psychology last year by American and English academics Nicholas Washmuth, Richard Stephens and Christopher Ballmann, posited that swearing “has been shown to modulate physiological, psychological and nociceptive (ie, pain tolerance and perception) responses, thus making it plausible that these mechanisms allow swearing to positively impact physical performance”.

The analysis detailed experiments where subjects were asked to perform certain athletic tasks, from lifting weights to testing their grip, and then do so again after swearing for 10 minutes. Remarkably, results across the board were improved after the bout of cursing.

Could a nice good swear on the pitch to express one’s anger stop a player from lashing out physically, channelling their anger through their vocal cords rather than their fists? Probably not, but while a few rude words said with enough venom won’t be enough of a release to stop you from punching someone, it’s certainly a less ostentatious form of catharsis.

“There’s a lot more plausible deniability than if you’re being watched by millions of people and you walk up to someone and punch someone in the face,” says Dr Love. “You can’t really deny it afterwards, right? I could then later claim I didn’t swear because nobody heard it. I could claim, ‘Well, actually, I said fork’.”

Ultimately, the sound of an athlete swearing shouldn’t be especially surprising or jarring. They’re just people and there’s not much any of us can do about that. Perhaps football or F1 or any other sporting authorities should not get quite so worked up about it.

And if they do, then f*** off. Or f*** you. Whichever you find less offensive.

(Top photos: Gabriel Bouys, Ander Gillenea/AFP; design: Demetrius Robinson)