SO, WHY WAS IT LEFT TO GUNNERS TO GIVE CZECHS A HAMMERING? STEPHEN McGOWAN
JUSTICE for Glen Kamara didn’t come from UEFA. It came, instead, from a rampant Arsenal. The ten-game ban handed down to Slavia Prague’s Ondrej Kudela by UEFA’s Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Committee for racial abuse of the Rangers midfielder was an exercise in box ticking.
It needed Alexandre Lacazette and Co to travel to Prague and deliver a meaningful act of karma. A 4-0 Europa League walkover for the Gunners was the kind of clinical and decisive punishment UEFA should have handed out.
When Joe Soap walks into his place of work and breaches the disciplinary code with racial insults, it’s an act of gross misconduct. His feet don’t touch the ground on the way out.
Contrast that with football, an industry where a professional can enter the field of play, call an opponent a ‘f ****** monkey’ behind a cupped hand, then spend the days afterwards blaming the victim.
A ten-game ban was the punishment handed down to Hamilton manager Brian Rice for breaching gambling rules. The two are not remotely the same.
Kudela denied charges of racism to the bitter end, aided and abetted by the screeching denials of a club who should have been turfed out on their ear long before Arsenal did the job on Thursday night.
When it comes to racial offences, Slavia Prague have a charge sheet the Proud Boys might find a bit much.
In November 2019, they demanded an apology from Inter Milan striker Romelu Lukaku when the Belgian claimed he was the victim of racial chanting from the ‘whole stadium’ after a Champions League game.
Slavia insisted the problem had only stemmed from a few racists at most — and more or less asked what the fuss was all about.
The same club were forced to close one stand by the Czech FA as punishment for their fans throwing bananas at a player from city rivals Sparta in season 2019-20.
Months later, they were fined £135,000 when their fans made monkey noises towards a player from Viktoria Plzen.
Last year, Plzen striker JeanDavid Beauguel claimed racism directed at black players in the Czech Republic had become ‘normal’. Scan the rambling open letter sent to UEFA by a senior government official and it’s easy to see why.
Kudela’s ban, claimed Vratislav Mynar, risked discrimination against white people.
UEFA, meanwhile, were accused of bowing to ‘the perverted expectations of a small group of activists’.
Strip it down and racism is not so different to alcoholism or sexism or any other destructive ‘ism’. To get help for the problem, you have to own up to the fact it’s there.
There has to be a serious commitment to fixing it. That’s too much to hope for if you refuse to acknowledge it exists in the first place.
Depressingly, the deflection of Czech politicians over Kudela’s actions echoes similar behaviour in other Eastern European countries such as Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania and Russia.
Yet the urge to paint discrimination as something which festers in eastern Europe obscures an embarrassing truth. Racism in football is happening all over.
Belgium, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Holland, Spain and Sweden have all witnessed sinister incidents in recent years.
Here in Scotland, meanwhile, fans will return to grounds soon enough. And when they do, the scourge of dim-witted sectarianism won’t be far behind.
The SFA are also ploughing through the disciplinary stench created by alleged racial abuse of Inverness striker Nikolay
Todorov by Raith defender Iain Davidson and vice versa. When these cases crop up, the pattern of events rarely alters.
Everyone expresses spluttering indignation for a week or two and demands a zero tolerance approach from the football authorities. After a bit, the whole thing dies down and the caravan moves on until the next time.
Football has been pounding a hamster’s wheel on racism for too long. The people in charge go round in circles with their new slogans and campaigns and promises to get tougher on the problem than ever before.
They encourage players to take the knee and promise to do the
right thing until push comes to shove and they don’t.
It’s not really Alexandre Lacazette’s job to hammer racial abuse in football. But somebody has to.
UEFA’s craven failure to send out an unequivocal message even the dim-witted racist can understand shames Europe’s governing body to the core.