Let’s not pretend football is serious about tackling racism. It isn’t. It’s not even close to being serious
TWO moments stand out for me in football’s canon of s pi nel ess, useless and pathetically self-reverential gestures at dealing with racism in the game in the last two decades. They stand out not like beacons in the night but like grotesques set free to dance and cavort in the sunlight.
The first came on the evening of November 17, 2004, at the Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid when two of England’s black players, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Ashley Cole, were subjected to a level of racist abuse I had never witnessed before, during a friendly match against Spain.
In a cacophony of ignorance, a majority of the Spain fans in the stadium that night yelled monkey chants at Wright-Phillips and Cole whenever they touched the ball. In the rows in front of the press box, I saw a father laughing with his young son as they shouted down at the pitch. They thought it was funny.
When the English voiced their outrage at the treatment of our players, we were condemned for being hypocrites. Whataboutery is an international phenomenon. I was castigated by a Spain-based journalist because my objection to the racism betrayed, apparently, an ignorance of Spanish culture. FIFA fined the Spanish FA £44,750. That was it.
The second came on the eve of Euro 2012 after there had been widespread predictions of racial abuse being aimed at players during the tournament. At a press conference in Warsaw, I listened to the UEFA president Michel Platini being asked what would happen if a player walked off the pitch in protest. Platini said he would be booked. That was it.
Both instances felt like affronts at the time. They still do. But the point is that things haven’t got any better since then. They did for a while but now we have regressed. Things are worse. There has been plenty of talking and even more grandstanding but very little action.
So we can all agree it is heartbreaking that a player as gifted as Danny Rose is talking about giving up on the game and counting down the months until he can retire because he is so sick of the attitudes black players face, but our words and our horror at his treatment are empty because nothing happens. Apart from gesture punishments, nothing ever happens.
Rose was abused when he was playing for England Under-21s in Serbia seven years ago, so he said he knew what was coming in Montenegro when England played their Euro 2020 qualifier there a fortnight ago. He was braced for it. He was ready for it. Black players see abuse as an inevitability now. That is the point we have reached.
So it is hardly a surprise that there are suggestions they will take the law into their own hands and walk off the pitch when they are racially abused. It is sad it has come to this but I hope they do it.
When the abuse starts again — and we all know it will start again — I hope they do walk off. I think it’s time. The inaction of the author- horities means black players have run out of options. They are not getting any real support from the authorities. And if they walk off, I hope they are supported by their teammates and their managers rather than patronised with lectures about how they should suffer in silence and show their nobility that way and not rock the boat.
That’s what happened in Italy last week when the young Juventus striker Moise Kean scored and stood expressionlessly in front of the Cagliari fans who had been racially abusing him. Instead of supporting him, his captain, Leonardo Bonucci, pushed him away. Later, Bonucci said the blame for the racist abuse was split 50-50 between Kean and the Cagliari fans. Juventus manager Massimiliano Allegri was also critical of Kean.
Let’s not pretend that football is serious about tackling racism. It isn’t. It’s not even close to being serious. That includes English football, too, by the way. If it were serious, it would use some of its billions to fund an organisation like Kick It Out properly rather than force it to work on a shoestring.
If it were serious, it wouldn’t spend 500 times more on agents’ fees than the fight against racism. If it were serious, it wouldn’t devote just 0.01 per cent of the Premier League’s £8.3billion television deal to finance the fight against racism.
If it were serious, it would have implemented a version of the Rooney Rule seeking to address the lack of black managers in our top four divisions long, long ago. If it were serious, it would start punishing clubs in our divisions when fans are guilty of racist abuse instead of targeting individuals.
Yes, I’ve heard all the arguments about this being society’s problem. Yes, I’ve heard John Barnes saying that the only way we can beat racism is through education. I get that but we’ve been saying that for decades and progress has stalled. Things are going backwards again.
How about this: if a black player walks off the pitch because a section of a crowd is abusing him, that’s a form of education. It’s a fast-track education. It’s a lesson in why enough is enough. It’s an education in why football should no longer throw up its hands in impotence about being used as a cesspit for the excretions of racists.
Maybe a kid wearing one of those high-priced replica shirts will see a black player walking off the pitch and ask his parents why he’s doing that. th And the parents will have to tell t him. That’s his education.
I’ve heard the other arguments against black players taking direct action, too. What if away fans infiltrate the home end and chant racist slogans? What if it’s only one person? What if it’s only a few? There’s always a reason not to do something. There’s been a reason not to do something for as long as football can remember.
There are other avenues towards education now. Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, showed that in the NFL when he started to take a knee before games during the national anthem. His form of dignified direct action against police brutality stalled his career but was an incredibly effective tool for shining a light on the oppression of black Americans.
English football has to be honest with itself and ask how much it wants to act or how much it wants to hide. Is it willing to risk delays to a match while offenders are rooted out? Is it willing to suspend a game? Is it willing to risk crowd unrest by taking action against perpetrators? Is it willing to alienate its racist paying customers?
The answers to those questions should be yes, yes, yes and yes. If they’re not, even though it means the authorities will have abrogated their responsibilities, even though it is unfair that they should have to put themselves on the line, black players will feel that it is only right that they take football’s law into their own hands.
‘I HOPE BLACK PLAYERS DO WALK OFF WHEN ABUSE STARTS AGAIN, AND WE KNOW IT WILL’