Silence over football’s links with sexual and domestic violence is deafening

Football is far enough removed from day-to-day life that you can approach it in some sort of moral vacuum. Photograph: Malcolm Bryce/ProSports/Shutterstock

There are lots of problems in football. And there are lots of conversations about the problems in football. Yet there’s a chasmic silence when it comes to the game’s disturbing links with sexual and domestic violence.

Why? Why aren’t there hundreds of opinion pieces about this? It’s difficult and pointless to rank all the bleak aspects of the game – from racism to sportswashing, from homophobia to corruption – but those conversations exist.