England football match is halted twice over racism
England players suffer shocking abuse ++ Monkey chants at Sterling and Rashford ++ Bulgaria fans make fascist salutes ++ Match stopped twice and almost abandoned
ENGLAND’S Euro 2020 qualifier in Bulgaria was halted twice last night following racist behaviour by home fans.
Gareth Southgate’s side faced abuse in Sofia, forcing the referee to initiate the new UEFA anti-racism protocol.
Players reported Bulgarian fans in the stands for making monkey noises, racist chants, and doing Nazi salutes.
Referee Ivan Bebek stopped play in the 28th minute after players paused to look at the stands when they heard racist chants. The stadium announcer warned Bulgarian fans to stop the chants. He said: ‘Please be in no doubt that the game will be suspended and even abandoned. Let everyone enjoy the game. Say no to racism.’
Just before half time play was again suspended and players stood around the pitch. The match resumed two minutes later but any further racist incidents could have resulted in the fixture, which England won 6-0, being abandoned.
Bulgarian fans faced disciplinary procedures in this match for previous racism in the Euro 2020 qualifiers.
Last week, after England said they would leave the pitch if they were racially abused, Bulgaria’s Football Union president Borislav Mihaylov said the branding of Bulgarian fans as racist was ‘unjust’. In a letter to UEFA, Mr Mihaylov said: ‘The Bulgarian public has in no way committed any recent infringements that deserve it to be stereotyped as “racist” or “hostile”. We are aware of the recent problems with racist behaviour in all tiers of English club football and with England’s ongoing battle with hooliganism.’
ENGLAND players came close to walking off the field last night as racist abuse by Bulgaria fans marred a thumping 6-0 victory in Euro 2020 qualifying.
Debutant Tyrone Mings complained to referee’s assistant Bojan Zobenica that he had been targeted midway through the first-half. Monkey chants were heard whenever Raheem Sterling and Marcus Rashford were on the ball and home fans were seen making fascist salutes.
Gareth Southgate’s side discussed the possibility of walking off and abandoning the game amid the sickening abuse from home fans at Stadion Vasil Levski but decided to finish the match so as not to let the racists win.
Speaking immediately after the game, FA chairman Greg Clarke said: ‘ What a disappointing night. I mean it’s probably one of the most appalling nights I’ve seen in football.
‘I spoke with Gareth and Harry Kane, before the game, when we were still in the Czech Republic, and we discussed how
IT was Raheem Sterling who had summed it up best — at a press conference in Prague last Thursday.
Asked if he feared this would be a trip to Eastern Europe marred by racism, Sterling suggested some countries still have discrimination engrained in their cultures. It did not sound like a warning at the time but maybe we should have taken it as such.
Here on a sorry night in Sofia, we began to understand exactly what Sterling meant.
We arrived at this primitive stadium to find swastikas stuck to the back of seats. There were other posters inside and outside indicating that inter-racial relationships were not welcome. In the press box, some of the locals wanted an argument before the game had started. If we thought this was going to be a night purely about the football, we really had been desperately naive.
And so it is that this will not be an occasion remembered for the six goals scored by Gareth Southgate’s exemplary team. No, we will remember this for what happened in the 27th and 42nd minutes of the first half.
They are the moments that will form grubby bookmarks in the history of England’s time on the international stage, the moments when Southgate and his players decided they had heard enough.
When the racist noises detected first by Tyrone Mings and then by other players in red became too clear and offensive to ignore.
This, remember, was Mings’s debut for England. How desperately unpleasant that the Aston Villa defender’s first notable act was to inform a referee’s assistant that he was being abused because he was black.
‘Have you heard that?’ Mings was seen to enquire of the official. It was a question that led to a stoppage a few minutes later and the first step of the UEFA protocol — an announcement over the public address that this game was in danger of being abandoned.
It is quite possible that is what some home fans wanted. The speculation before the match was that things would be fine while Bulgaria were still in the game and less so when they were not.
So Bulgaria were 2-0 down by the time the abuse started and that was not a coincidence. If the Bulgarians could not impact this game on the pitch — where their team were awful — the best thing would be to get the thing called off. The day before the game, the Bulgaria supporters had been set the very worst example by their own manager. Another clear pointer to what lay ahead.
Despite the Bulgarian FA warning their English counterparts at a meeting last month that racist incidents at the game were ‘very possible’, coach Krasimir Balakov suggested the English had bigger problem with discrimination.
With Balakov as a spokesperson, what hope did we ever have of this evening passing off without incident?
The only chance, on reflection, was for Bulgaria to stay competitive but they never looked good enough to do so. First-half goals by Marcus Rashford, Sterling and two from Ross Barkley were enough to push the Bulgaria players to the brink of implosion.
As their supporters did their thing in the stands, their players reacted in the worst possible way, spoiling for confrontation.
When the bones are picked from this night, it should be noted that it is not just the right-wing element of the Bulgaria support who carry this stain.
They may have been the ones making the monkey noises and fascist salutes, but the Bulgaria players and management are culpable, too. On the field, the greatest ill- discipline was shown by their captain.
While Southgate spoke to the referee and the UEFA delegate during the second stoppage, England’s Jordan Henderson argued with Balakov. At this stage it felt very unlikely we would see the game through to the end.
The atmosphere in the stands was only growing more febrile. Another intervention seemed almost inevitable and that would have been the worst outcome, a victory for the bigots.
Happily, we got through somehow. The only consolation we can take from this abysmal spectacle is that a football match was played and a result was recorded. Much of the credit for that must go to Southgate and his players. They were ambassadors for their sport and country on a night when the provocation could not have been more extreme.
As the hostility calmed in the second half, England scored two more goals through Sterling and Harry Kane. Such an emphatic result was the best statement these players could make.
But what matters much more is what UEFA do now. This should be viewed as a landmark night by the European governing body. A watershed. Fines and partial stadium closures do not work.
What would work is expulsion from competition. Nobody likes to be thrown out of a party.
But will UEFA exhibit the same courage shown here by someone such as Tyrone Mings? Will they have the fortitude, as he did, to do what is right?
Don’t hold your breath.