Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
UEFA fatcats care more about their fillet steaks than they do about young England players being racially abused by bigots
HERE is a vignette from a now-notorious October night in Eastern Europe.
A couple of hours before a 21.45 kick-off, a high-ranking UEFA official, resplendent in a company suit, emerges blinking from the Grand Hotel into the Sofia sunlight.
It is a beautiful evening. A Gypsy Summer, they call it in those parts. Which hints at a lot.
The Grand Hotel, the interior walls of which are festooned with testimonies from famous guests, is a brisk 15-minute stroll from the Vasil Levski Stadium.
Straight down the main road, past Starbucks and a couple of checkpoints from the old Communist days, preserved for posterity.
Not for the UEFA official. He is not just a VIP, but a VVIP.
That mile is a long way wheeling your Louis Vuitton cabin baggage behind you.
Which is why he will be going to the ground behind the tinted windows of a stretch Mercedes.
But not before he has taken care of one important piece of housekeeping.
A suitably subservient chap needs to take the UEFA bigwig’s order before he lowers himself into the limo.
His order for dinner when he arrives at the venue in five minutes’ time, that is.
Fillet steak. Rare. Rare. Make sure it is rare, he repeats a couple of times, just in case there are any doubts.
And in he gets. On his way to eating the finest barely cooked Bulgarian beef while football burns.
As starters are served, the black-shirted bigots congregate in the cheap seats.
Replete with the nicest cuts of cattle, maybe even a button of his jacket raffishly undone, the UEFA official and his fellow diners watch and listen as England’s black players are racially abused by the meat-heads (below). And. They. Do. Nothing. It is left to Ivan Bebek, a fine referee with a lot more on his plate than a chunk of livestock a decent vet might save.
It is left to young men, who have come here just to play football, not to gorge on hospitality.
It is left to Gareth Southgate, a manager now not only concerned about formation, but about the sensitivities of nations.
Should the referee have taken the teams off? Should the players have walked off? Should Southgate have ordered his side off ?
The arguments are irrelevant. England’s players, admirably, said that if one player wanted to walk off, they would all walk off.
But, like it or not, the players have vested interests.
Would Tyrone Mings (below, right), despite the vile abuse, have wanted his debut to be a pockmark in football’s record books?
Would Ross Barkley have wanted his two goals to be scrubbed from national statistics?
Would Harry Kane have wanted to look a goalscoring gift horse in its ugly mouth?
The players, the managers, the referee – these are people with an emotionally vested interest in the game. As a white, middle-aged man, I’m not going to tell young black men what they should and should not do when assaulted by abhorrent abuse.
But it should have been out of their hands on Monday.
It is all well and good UEFA charging and punishing national associations.
It is all well and good having protocols.
But the UEFA officials digesting dinner in the stands of a bleak arena heard every bit of abuse, saw every disgusting gesture.
And the bottom line is they should not be just looking on and then filing a report after doing their expenses.
Monday night in Sofia should be a watershed moment.
From now on, never mind protocols.
Whatever organisation has the game under its authority – UEFA, in this instance – should have the sole power to call it off when its representatives have heard the abuse.
The man in the Merc, who ate well, should have dragged the teams off on Monday. He heard it all, he saw it all. He had the best seat in the house.
It was just a shame he was probably looking at the dessert menu.