Kick Racism out of Football

My post yesterday on the alleged racist abuse that Rangers’ star Maurice Edu received from his own fans got me thinking – Can these incidents ever be stopped?

Your average African/Asian/Caribbean Footballer won’t be adverse to remarks made about their race or ethnic background, and that’s a horrible truth to admit. I’ll give you a few shocking examples of incidents whereby players have received racist abuse from fans, opposition players, and even the board members of their own clubs.

1) Now-AC Milan central defender Oguchi Onyewu, who’s an American of Nigerian descent, has been punched and shouted at by fans of Standard Liege, whom he played for before joining the Italian giants.

Also, during the 2008-09 Championship playoff, Anderlecht defender Jelle van Damme repeatedly called Onyewu a “dirty ape”. After the match van Damme denied it and claimed that Onyewu had called him a “dirty flemish”. Two weeks after the incident it was announced by Onyewu’s lawyer that he would attempt to sue van Damme in a bid to end on-field racism in European Football.

2) Republic of Congo International Zola Matumona left FC Brussels last year after he accused Club Chairman Johan Vermeersch of making racist remarks towards him during a crisis meeting at the club. It is reported that he told Matumona to “think about other things than trees and bananas”.

3) During a Spanish training session in 2004, the Spanish media filmed coach Luis Aragones trying to motivate Jose Antonio Reyes by making racist remarks about his then-teammate at Arsenal Thierry Henry. The phrase used translates into English as “show that you’re better than that black s***”. Unsurprisingly the incident caused uproar back in England with widespread calls for Aragones to be sacked and severely punished. However, the Spanish FA declined to act against Aragones and politicians were slow to denounce the remarks.

England visited Spain a short while after to contest a friendly match at Santiago Bernabeu, home of Real Madrid. The atmosphere was extremely hostile, and throughout England’s singing of the national anthem, Spanish fans racially chanted towards the England team. Shaun Wright-Phillips and Ashley Cole were the unfortunate victims of the chanting.

Aragones’ comments were much blamed for inciting the incident, and even Tony Blair, the Prime Minister at the time, got involved. However, Aragones somehow won his appeal over the offence, with the misdemeanour being downgraded to “conduct which could be considered to be racist”.

So these are the kind of incidents that need to be kicked out of Football. But how?

Placing lifetime bans on the cretins that do these things is a start. Hefty fines is another way. Even prison sentences if you want to go to the absolute extreme. But I’m just questioning whether this will really diminish racism and whether the endless ‘give racism the red card’ campaigns are just a waste of time.

The reason people give racist abuse is because they're ignorant, primarily. They’re ignorant people who don’t know a thing about social and moral etiquette, whether Football-related or not. Spain and Latin America are renowned for being primary culprits of distributing racial abuse, so that’s got to tell you something about what they’re taught, and the behaviour they learn. Are they not being told that racism is a bad thing? Isn’t it time they were?

In this country and the rest of the UK racist abuse is still evident. We know that from the Maurice Edu incident. But it’s definitely not on as big a scale as it is in Europe. So this perhaps suggests that the campaigns do in fact work, and that people are taking note. They also know that big punishments will come their way if they’re caught, something that the Spanish for example know they’ll escape because the Spanish FA and government are far too lenient and probably just as bad.

This probably suggests then, that similar regimes and schemes should be introduced into the European and World game. There are a few, like “Football united against Racism”, but no where near as many and certainly not as passionately put in place as in the UK.

So for me, it is about campaigning. At a glance you would say propaganda doesn’t work due to the lingering cloud of racism over Football still, but on closer inspection the situation in the English game is greatly improved thanks to such schemes as the “stand up, speak up” scheme pictured at the top of this post. Fine tuning, and introduction of more regimes in Europe is now what is required.