Deep cracks appear along old fault line

Euro 2012 was supposed to bring east and west together, but boycotts and claims of racism threaten to overshadow the football.

Euro 2012 was supposed to be about changing attitudes. It was supposed to be about the west embracing the east, both sides getting to know one another a little better. It was supposed to be about the east proving it could host a major event; in Poland particularly the talk has all been of the years of resistance and opposition being over and this being a new nation that can create something of its own. Lech Walesa spoke of the need for mutual co-operation among the nations of Europe and of the tournament being an avenue for that.

Yet the first day broke not with fevered anticipation of Poland and Greece (not that that in truth, was ever likely), but with talk of racism and the boycott by western European politicians of games in Ukraine. In turn there is anger among Poles and Ukrainians about how they have been portrayed and rants from Ukrainian politicians about “Cold War politics”. If anything, the old suspicions are in danger of being confirmed.

I first met Marcin Stefanski seven years ago. Back then he was the director of the Polish league; now he holds a similar role within the Polish football federation (PZPN). In 2005, he was as weary and disillusioned as any football official I’ve ever met. “In Poland,” he said then, “football is like a very ugly daughter. The parents say, ‘Okay, we have it, so we have to have it’, but they don’t really want it.”

The stadiums, owned by the municipalities, were crumbling. Attendances were low, hooliganism and racism were rife. There was no money and a match-fixing scandal that has still not fully been resolved was just flickering into the public consciousness.

Things have got better over the past few years and while it would be an exaggeration to say he bounds with optimism, he certainly isn’t as pessimistic as he was. The match-fixing inquiry goes on, with several hundred players, referees and officials having been arrested. Hooliganism is still a problem, and the PZPN’s attempts to tackle it — mainly by banning away fans — are deeply unpopular, perhaps even counter-productive. But stadiums have been built and, generally, the match-going experience is a lot more pleasant than it was — notwithstanding complaints this week as well about ordinary fans being priced out of the Euros.

The build-up to the tournament though, has been characterised by bad news, with the BBC and Sky reporting violent and racist behaviour among fans — mainly in Ukraine, admittedly, but the blight colours the whole tournament. “They are liars and idiots,” a Ukrainian contact of mine who works for Shakhtar Donetsk said of the programme-makers. “I’ve never even heard of the Donetsk Company [the hooligan firm followed by the Sky programme].”

He acknowledges there is a hooligan problem and issues with the far right, but insists the majority of fans oppose them.

To an extent I sympathise with him. There was an element of sensationalism to both programmes — and it would be wrong to suggest any more than a minority of Poles and Ukrainians are racist. Yet at the same time what both programmes showed did happen: hooligan groups did beat each other up; a group of Asian fans was attacked in Kharkiv — and that in itself is deeply troubling. That the families of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Theo Walcott have decided not to travel is dreadfully sad but hearing the reports of Dutch players being racially abused at training in Krakow on Thursday it’s hard to blame them.

As somebody who has visited Poland and Ukraine repeatedly over the past decade and found much to like, I find that deeply depressing.

The situation feels similar to that with English hooliganism in the Eighties in that just as you think things are improving, another incident occurs that makes you despair. What’s worse is that the programmes seem to have acted as a provocation, making the far right more militant and alienating ordinary fans.

The boycott by the British government, joining Germany, the president of the European commission, José Manuel Barroso, and Viviane Reding, the EU commissioner for justice, in refusing to travel to Ukraine, is a further shadow.

Perhaps they are right to make a stand over the alleged mistreatment of the jailed former prime minister Yuliya Tymoshcenko, but it’s not clear why similar protests about “selective justice” weren’t made in China at the Olympics in 2008.

Should Poland and Ukraine have been awarded the Euros? How badly does a government have to behave before a tournament should be taken away from them? I honestly don’t know.

Tournaments have overcome shakier starts than this, but the sadness for Poland and Ukraine is that the Euros has begun not with a sense of pride and opportunity but with recrimination and bitterness.