Dark cloud of racism still hangs over sport

SO just when football likes to think it’s got that monkey off its back, the beast is heard braying loud and clear across Europe again.

Laudable efforts may have been made to kick racism out of football but as the monkey chants boomed around the Bernabeu in Madrid on Wednesday night, the message could not have been more sickeningly clear - it hasn’t gone away, you know.

Viewed purely as a football match, Spain’s 1-0 victory over England in a supposed friendly could have kept the back pages fully occupied with a post-mortem that would have been grisly enough in itself.

There was England’s lamentable performance for a start, in sharp contrast to the pace and panache of a Spanish side which, as Alan Hansen put it, handed the visitors a footballing lesson. There was yet another anonymous 90 minutes for David Beckham, who was rewarded with a zero rating by the Spanish paper Marca and an even more damning one word review: perdito (lost). And, of course, there was the boy Rooney, succumbing to the red mist if not the red card, but only because Sven Goran Eriksson got to him before the referee did.

Indeed, the manner of Rooney’s petulant departure could have hogged all the headlines by itself, as he tore off and threw to the ground the black armband being worn as a tribute to the late Emlyn Hughes. If he wasn’t already guaranteed a hot reception the next time he visits either ground in Merseyside, he most certainly is now, although one has to conclude that it was unthinking madness rather than calculated malice which prompted the crass gesture.

But all those aspects of an unhappy night for England in Madrid have been overshadowed by the racist chanting which so disfigured the occasion and made it a night for Spanish, not English, soul-searching.

Not that there’s a whole lot of evidence that at least some of those in a position of influence in Spanish football are treating the matter with the seriousness it deserves. Yes, Spain’s FA has now formally apologised, but the silence of manager Luis Aragones is almost as deafening as the chants themselves.

This, remember, is the man who was recently overheard trying to gee up Jose Antonia Reyes at a training session by telling him that he was better than that “black shit”, Thierry Henry. In any other high profile business, a slur of that nature would be a sackable offence but the football authorities in Spain did nothing, other than to give the almost carefree impression that this was just another example of the national team manager’s renowned eccentricity.

Better example has been shown by Spain’s political elite, with prime minister Zapatero’s office quick to brand Wednesday night’s abuse “intolerable.”

And if the media message there has been mixed - in live tv coverage the sound of the chanting was turned down and some Spanish papers passed over the racism to applaud their team - there has also been some outright condemnation in the press about the ugly nature of the night’s events.

Lest we tar an entire nation with the one brush, it should also be noted that Spain’s own anti-racist groups have also come out strongly against the chanting.

In England, there has been much debate about whether their team should have left the pitch in protest on Wednesday night. None could have blamed them if they had, but quite apart from handing the racists in the crowd some kind of a twisted victory, there is also the danger that a unilateral move of such magnitude - however stirring as an expression of solidarity among black and white - might only have provoked the meatheads in the ground to even greater, more riotous excess. Better to leave it up to UEFA and FIFA.

For followers of the English game, the events in the Bernabeu brought back uncomfortable memories of how it used to be in Blighty. From the days when Clyde Best was almost a novelty in the game as a black player at West Ham, through to the imperishable image of a remarkably dignified John Barnes coolly kicking a banana off the field of play, racism seemed for a long time like it was an intrinsic part of what the continentals used to, somewhat smugly, call “the English disease.”

Between better policing and solid anti-racist initiatives on the part of the FA, an enormous amount of progress has been made to combat prejudice. And true football fans are especially deserving of credit, because it was in fanzines, on the terraces and outside grounds that much of the crucial early work was done, by enlightened and brave supporters, to reverse a rising tide of neo-fascism in the 80s.

Yet, for all the shock felt in this part of the world at what happened in Spain, there is no excuse for being complacent. Ron Atkinson might have been caught out by a live mic but it’s not plausible to believe that he is unique in English football for having recourse to racist language, at least in private.

Here at home, there are eircom League encounters where the atmosphere among rival fans can be poisonous. In Irish society in general, a welcome increase in immigration is being mirrored by an ugly growth in prejudice which will surely not leave football untouched.

Lively rivalry is all well and good, but perhaps what we all have to combat is the too widespread acceptance that supporting your own is not enough, without heaping bile on the other.