Kick racism out to touch

IT HAS been another week where racism in sport has unfortunately reared its ugly head again.

On Wednesday, we woke up to shocking headlines about a fan who was prevented from boarding a train in Paris by Chelsea fans, who pushed him away chanting a song containing the words: “We are racist, and we like it that way.”

The fans had attended the European Champions League match between PSG and the English Premiership side, after which they decided to prevent a black PSG fan from boarding a train.

That the incident was captured on video helped expose these bigots, but on another day, this could have been another case of a fan experiencing blatant discrimination with no consequences for the perpetrators.

We are happy that Fifa, through its president Sepp Blatter, were quick to condemn this incident, and that the club, Chelsea, also promised to isolate the racists and ban them from attending future games.

This kind of racism, however, is not merely limited to train stations. Here in South Africa, we have heard of black fans complaining about racial slurs thrown around whenever they attend rugby games.

We hope fans who experience this will, as of now, be more proactive and record such incidents, as this would help expose this unacceptable behaviour. The truth of the matter is Chelsea fans might have got away with their racism had it not been filmed.

We may have had to rely on hearsay, as in the case of Italian Arrigo Sacchi, who this week complained that there were “too many foreigners and coloureds ” in Italian football ’ s junior ranks.

He managed to get away with “explaining ” his comments, reasoning he ’ s never been racist because he once coached Frank Rijkaard, the Dutch legend.

“I just wanted to point out that we are losing our national pride and identity,” he said.

We are afraid this is not good enough. Fifa must take stern action against such racism.