RACISM IN THE STANDS...BUT NEVER THE DRESSING ROOM
I AM not going to suggest I have an answer for how we eliminate racism in society. All I can do here is talk about some of the things I have experienced in my career and tell you what I have seen. The worst episode of racism I encountered was in Eastern Europe playing for England’s Under 21s. Shola Ameobi and Shaun Wright-Phillips were on the receiving end from the whole stadium and it was an abysmal experience. Shola, to his great credit, treated his abusers with total disdain. I cannot say how widespread racism around stadiums is but what I do know is that it hasn’t existed in any of the dressing rooms I have played in. In there, everyone is equal and you make judgments on how people play — not how they look. That, I believe, is how it will always be. Is everyone viewed equally from the stands? I don’t know and I’ve thought about something Gary Neville said about Ashley Cole now being a ‘footballing refugee’. Ashley was an England colleague of mine and he was genuinely world-class, a player who hit eight or nine out of 10 each time he played. But the way he was booed when playing for England suggested there was some underlying ill-feeling towards him. People will say it stems from the money he asked for when he was playing for Arsenal but, be honest, he was not the only man to have contractual issues. Were people resentful of him? Ashley, I must stress, never said anything to us. If he felt there was something sinister behind his treatment, he didn’t speak about it to the group. He just got on with it in the face of the booing and the shouting. And that is something I have never understood — why people behave in such an aggressive way once they step into a football ground. I’ve been screamed at all my life from the stands for the way I look and it will never change. You look at some people when they swear at you and make gestures, and know that if you met each other on the street, they would ask for a selfie or an autograph. So why is there such a big change when you put on a different coloured kit? Nobody of fair mind will ever understand.