The recent racist actions in world football have left me wondering if anyone is really serious about this scourge and what it will take to get it out of the game. The first and most high-profile event was when the Juventus striker Moise Kane was racially abused by Cagliari fans after he scored, it was compounded by the fact that his ‘teammate’ said postgame that Kean shared 50percent of the blame. The second and less noticed event was in the English Saturday Vase final (Amateurs) when the players walked off after one of their teammates was racially abused (and a melee ensued after).
These actions have shown that racism is in every level of the game (duh, just look at society) and that the measures hitherto used have not worked as we see incidents rising again in the UK (both Catholic versus Protestant sectarianism as in Scotland & N. Ireland and racial/religious in England & Wales). Fines have clearly not worked as we see clubs such as D. Kiev as well as the Belgrade clubs repeatedly paying fines. They clearly have not worked as we see Italian football remains fraught with racist abuse and coddlers of racists remain in charge of both clubs as well as the football federation.
No, fines have not worked, and it is time we admit that they will never work, but what may work are both walk-offs as well as court actions.
Walk-offs are the most obvious way to get the point across that something must change in the grounds. With Black, mixed and Asian players making up the majority of the major leagues (from Europe all the way to South America), if they were to walk off en masse whenever abuse was hurled from the stands then I believe that in almost no time the abuse would stop. Why, because the owners of the clubs will not want a repeat of the incident, a match abandoned, possibly forfeited and 3 points automatically dropped or elimination if it is a knockout match. If players and their teammates did this enough times then I think that the owners would be compelled to ensure that the abuse from the stand’s ends.
However, I think that the courts would be the most harmful (to the owners) avenue to take and would thus ensure that the abuse ends. The football club in spite of what fans think is a business, oftentimes a private business, a company with employers, employees and a workplace. The players are the employees and the stadiums are the workplace, racial abuse hurled by 5000 fans out of 50000 on a fortnightly basis can almost certainly be construed as a hostile work environment. If even one player were to take an offending club to court things would change prior to a ruling, if they were successful in their suit repeat offenders could theoretically be forced out of the hands of owners who are deemed to be not changing (akin a financial institution changing hands as the owner fails the fit and proper examinations, as all FA’s do).
It is laudable to do as some say (and do) and stay on the pitch play harder and win and there is some (but nowhere near all) truth in that the abuse is hurled to throw one off one’s game (mind games). But that is not always the case, especially since we know who the abusers are. These are the Ultras, the Chelsea Head-hunters etc. These are the racists of society, the fringe extreme right, be it in Serbia (where the Red Star Ultras actively fought in the Yugoslav conflict along strictly ethnic lines), to the Roma fans who harken back to the founding of AS Roma (Mussolini waning Rome to have one central club, Lazio alone stood against the forced mergers because a fascist party highflyer was a board member).
It is true that racism stems from society and that sport and its accompaniments (fans and chanting included) is shaped by society and that no amount of banning in the stadiums will clean up society as a whole. I get that, but that, however, is a whole other discussion and not the purview of the club or the player. All the club can control and should control is who enters the grounds and policing what they say. If the club officials fail in that duty, that one task of protecting the employee (let’s be frank, the main breadwinner) then walking off and suing (for repeat offenders) seems to be the only options which will actually change anything.
A club like Roma can afford to pay even a $55 million dollar fine, that is nothing to clubs which rake in hundreds of millions and sometimes billions of dollars. UEFA will not ban a Chelsea or a PSG, that would mean killing the golden goose which is the Champions League, so expecting change or some form of concrete and draconian justice from them is like a man dying of thirst praying for rain in the Mojave desert, it’s not going to happen.
Take a stand, walk off and take repeat offending clubs to court, nobility gets nothing positive done. Take a stand to at least end this scourge within the stadium, a place which should be an area of release, joy and vicarious living, or allow it to become the primal arenas and colosseums of Rome and the people begin calling for blood. Society can’t be changed overnight but this can, we may have to get to the stadium wading through racial epithets hurled at us and we may have to go home much the same way, but the stadium which can be controlled should not be that way, it must be stopped. Those who can’t police their stadiums and end this should suffer, and the only way they will feel it must change and that it is too much is with an automatic loss caused by walk-offs and litigation, anything else is a band-aid and simply ignoring real solutions to real problem which can actually be addressed.
jamaicachange 