Author: Gerardo Orlando (Page 57 of 75)

This story is very disheartening.

Ghanaian soccer player Solomon Opoku heard the Serbian fans screaming racist insults and turned around as they set upon him, hurling punches and abuse.

The attackers were supporters of Opoku’s team, determined that a black player shouldn’t take the field for their club.

Two days later, Olympique Marseille President Pape Diouf got a firsthand look at what his black players endure when he traveled to the team’s UEFA Cup match at Zenit St. Petersburg in northern Russia.

“What we went through was hideous,” Diouf, who is black, said in an interview with the Associated Press. “It was the classic stuff, the bananas thrown at black players warming up, the monkey chants, obscene gestures. Not only does Zenit not hide the fact that no black player could play for this club, the fans say so themselves.”

Racism has become the scourge of European soccer stadiums. Whether the supporters are watching a minor league in Serbia or a major European competition such as the Champions League, matches are stubbornly plagued by prejudice from the Mediterranean Sea to the Ural Mountains.

Anti-racism campaigns aimed at fans have met with limited success at best, leaving the problem to FIFA, the sport’s governing body, and the Union of European Football Associations to clean up.

Soccer officials have condemned fan racism and issued fines. But penalizing clubs or nations in ways that would hurt both them and their fans — such as disqualification from tournaments, forfeiting points or stopping a match — is something they have been reluctant to do.

“You have countries, [like] Russia today, where racism is a quasi-official doctrine,” said Pascal Mignon, a French sociology researcher at the INSEP sporting institute. “In Russia, xenophobia is quite strong. So you will see it in a more powerful way, like you will in southern European countries like Spain or Italy.”

FIFA needs to take tougher action.