Tommy Martin: Silence is sometimes golden when it comes to sport's online racists

Real Madrid's Vinicius Junior after scoring the opening goal in the Champions League playoff against SL Benfica. Pic: AP Photo/Pedro Rocha

Whatever you might think about his selection decisions, Andy Farrell got one thing right this week.

“We’ve had the conversation and he’s fine, thankfully. But it’s obviously disgusting,” the Ireland head coach said when asked about the racist abuse directed at Munster lock Edwin Edogbo on social media after making his debut for Ireland against Italy last Saturday.

“There’s no need for it in society. I didn’t read it. I don’t want to read it, I don’t want to give people anything to even think that I’m even commenting on some of the stuff that has been said really because they certainly don’t deserve that.” 

And he’s spot on. Sometimes you can’t engage. Sometimes there is no need to understand how the other side thinks, to reason and debate.

How can you reason with a point of view that looks at something as life-affirming as Edogbo’s Ireland debut and sees an opportunity to peddle crackpot Great Replacement theories and general far-right hate speech?

There is no debating about this stuff, particularly as there is often no one to debate with. After the IRFU turned off replies on their social media posts congratulating Edogbo, they announced that Signify, the data company hired last year to protect Irish rugby players from online abuse, were on the case to see if there was evidence that the long arm of the law might be interested in.

They may well find plenty of sad individuals whose lives are so full of pain and spite that they find some brief, momentary relief in posting a racist comment about a young man at the pinnacle of his professional and sporting life.

But most likely they will also find reams of bots and automated racist and anti-immigration content, which are turned on like a slurry spreader whenever the opportunity arises to amplify this wretched discourse.

Look at any post on X concerning Edogbo this week and you will see the comments, too many and too repetitive to be anything other than the systematic work of those who seek to game online platforms in the cause of misery and hate.

Farrell is right, you cannot even comment on or recognise the content of these posts. Instead, you look after the individuals involved and hope that the authorities can deal with it and you wait in vain hope for a government that will pluck up the gumption to legislate.

As well as being a playground for hate-merchants, X is a platform that recently produced a feature that gleefully allowed the AI generation of child pornographic images. It takes nowhere near the action required to stop all the harm that takes place under its roof and, in fact, seems to encourage it. It would be surprising if the IRFU aren’t thinking along the lines of many other reputable organisations and figuring that it may be time to stop posting about players in their care on X altogether.

The idea of zero tolerance for this stuff could do with catching on with football’s authorities as well. Tuesday night in Lisbon should have been a grand Champions League occasion, adorned by a goal by Real Madrid’s Vinicius Junior that deserved all the post-match headlines.

Instead, an investigation is underway after Vinicius accused Benfica’s Gianluca Prestianni of racially abusing him in the moments after his goal. Prestianni denied the accusation, saying that Vinicius had misinterpreted is remarks, which were delivered while the Argentinian covered his mouth with his jersey. Several of Vinicius’s Real Madrid teammates, including Kylian Mbappé, say they heard the insults clearly.

A UEFA investigation into the incident will now take its course, but the conduct of Benfica and their manager Jose Mourinho was a case study in tone deafness. Mourinho’s grim take was to infer that Vinicius had brought whatever opprobrium came his way upon himself because of the provocative nature of his goal celebration.

"These talents are able to do these beautiful things but unfortunately he was not just happy to score that astonishing goal," Mourinho told Amazon Prime Video Sport. "When you score a goal like that, you celebrate in a respectful way."

As if completing some sort of cringey bingo card, Mourinho topped this off by claiming that Benfica could never be responsible for an incident of racism, because their most famous player was Eusebio. Basically, a variation on ‘some of my best mates are black’. Jesus Christ, José.

Whatever happened on Tuesday night, what is known is that Vinicius Junior has been engaged in an epic individual battle against ingrained racist attitudes for most of his time as a Real Madrid player. In a piece for BBC Sport, the Spanish football journalist Guillem Balague calculated that the Lisbon incident marked the 20th occasion in which Vinicius has been allegedly racially abused since he joined Real in 2018.

Throughout that time, he has been accused of being somehow partly responsible for this treatment because of the brash nature of his personality or how he celebrated goals in front of hostile away fans. On one occasion, a talking head on the Spanish TV show El Chiringuito said Vinicius should "stop acting like a monkey" if he wanted the abuse to stop, generating a grotesque meta-scandal all of its own.

Not a lot was done about the abuse at first: investigations led to nothing, charges dropped. But when Vinicius confronted and pointed out perpetrators of chants and monkey gestures at Valencia in 2023, the case eventually led to three fans being sentenced to eight months in prison and two-year stadium bans, the first convictions of their kind to be handed out in Spain.

This has all been painful and bloody hard work for the guy, but it has brought about change. Harsher punishments, more awareness, challenging the attitudes that allowed the abuse to flourish. Even the existence of the three-step racism protocol, seen on Tuesday night with the referee’s arms-crossed gesture, is at least football acknowledging this exists and not suggesting victims should just get on with the game.

"Many people asked me to ignore it, others said that my fight was in vain and that I should just 'play football'," Vinicius said in a post after the Valencia convictions, ironically on X. "But, as I've always said, I'm not a victim of racism. I am an executioner of racists. This first criminal conviction in Spanish history is not for me. It's for all black people.” And yet you can still get someone as experienced at the elite level as Mourinho coming out with what has been described as a classic bit of gaslighting. You still see clear footage of kids making monkey gestures towards Vinicius in the stadium on Tuesday.

Where next? UEFA banned a Slavia Prague player for 10 games in 2021 for racially abusing Rangers midfielder Glen Kamara in a Europa League tie. You could be out for longer with a gammy hamstring. The Bulgarian FA had to play one game behind closed doors after England players were subjected to mass racist abuse during a Euro 2020 qualifier in 2019. Is that zero tolerance?

The last word to one of Mourinho’s successors as Chelsea manager, Liam Rosenior, a black man in football who knows about racist abuse. “If any player or any coach or any manager is ever found guilty of racism, they shouldn’t be in the game. It’s as simple as that for me.” 

As Farrell was suggesting, end of conversation.