An interesting and balanced article I think.
Prejudice is a two-way street
There has been understandable fury in Serbia about England's blinkered and damaging attitude following the countries' fiery Under-21 clash.
Jonathan Wilson, Guardian Unlimited
June 25, 2007 1:38 PM
"Everyone knows around the nation what sort of country they are, the fans and what have you," said Matt Derbyshire after England's game against Serbia in the European Under-21 Championship last week. If anything should shake Britain out of its anti-racist smugness, it is that.
I don't particularly want to have a go at Derbyshire here because he was speaking on the spur of the moment after a game that must have been distressing to him, both because of the racial abuse his team-mates suffered - from the crowd and allegedly from opposing players in the tunnel - and because of the brawl sparked when he scored as a Serbian player was down injured. What is worrying is the fact that it has provoked so little comment, apart from in Serbia, where there has been understandable fury.
I hadn't really wanted to write about this because I thought the issues were obvious. The reactions of the past week, though, have shown that they are not. Too many in Britain have responded by giving a sanctimoniously good kicking to the last European country against which it went to war - a blinkered and damaging attitude summed up by Derbyshire's comment - while too many of the posters on Serbian messageboards have retreated into the worst kind of ****-you isolationism.
Both sides have, confusingly, tied the issue up with Derbyshire's goal. "I say if you want to play fair, then don't make those racist chants or call people racist names," said Leroy Lita, but the issues are wholly separate. Racist chanting does not justify unsportsmanlike behaviour; unsportsmanlike behaviour does not justify racist chanting. They are not related.
To deal - briefly - with the goal: in the Premiership last season there was a directive that players should not put the ball out of play if members of the opposition were injured; elsewhere in the world convention says that if a player is down, the ball should go out no matter which team he is on. Personally, I think the English convention is the more sensible - it prevents abuse of the system by feigning injury, and if a player is seriously hurt, the referee can stop the game - but I accept that the rest of the world does not see it like that. A Uefa directive at the beginning of tournaments would be useful to clear up such difficulties, but in this instance you have to accept that the sides were playing under opposing interpretations of the law, and when that happens there is bound to be acrimony.
Beside the racism, though, that is a side issue. Let us, if it is possible after the mass outpourings of self-righteousness, return to the facts. A significant number of Serbian fans racially abused black England players. That is deplorable, and in an ideal world those responsible would have been arrested and prosecuted under whatever anti-discrimination or public order legislation is appropriate in the Netherlands. And that, really, is it.
The attendance, after all, was only 9,133. It wasn't as though the racists were part of an uncontrollable raging mob. If police and stewards couldn't identify at least some of those responsible and take action against them, then frankly there is something seriously wrong with security procedures at the ground. Still, the policing is secondary. The primary issue is that fans racially abused players, and that is unacceptable.
Uefa has opened disciplinary proceedings against the Serbian FA over the conduct of Serbia's fans and players, with the cases due to be discussed on July 12. The great problem in dealing with issues like this is the sense of shared responsibility, that fans of one particular team - and indeed the team themselves - tend to be regarded as a collective. Should a team and its supporters be punished for the behaviour of some of its fans? It's not an easy question to answer because at its worst extreme this attitude leads to the sort of indiscriminate truncheon charges Manchester United fans endured in Lens and Rome, and Tottenham fans in Seville. The logic appears to be that of a headteacher keeping the whole school behind at break because somebody misbehaved during assembly. If a little rowdiness puts everybody at risk, the theory seems to run, a level of self-policing will emerge. Whether that works is debatable and, purely in the abstract, such thinking should have no place in a liberal society.
At the other extreme is the peculiar justification for the decision to fine West Ham over the Tevez-Mascherano affair rather than dock them points - the argument being that to relegate the club would have been unfair on the fans, who had nothing to do with the misregistration of players. In both cases, it seems to me, a failure to differentiate between team and fans, or between fans and other fans, is dangerous. As far as possible, surely, individuals should be punished as individuals.
Where punishing the team for the behaviour of their fans probably is acceptable is when the offence occurs in a team's home stadium, or other instances where they could reasonably be expected to have control over the individuals concerned. The home team must take responsibility for security - even to an extent for the atmosphere in the ground - and where that is unacceptable they must take the consequences. When the referee Anders Frisk was struck by a missile thrown by a Roma fan during a Champions League game in the Stadio Olimpico, Uefa was right to award the points to Dynamo Kyiv. Spain, similarly, should have been punished more heavily than a 100,000 Swiss Franc (£40,000) fine after the racist abuse that tarnished their friendly against England in 2004, and England were lucky to get away with a 150,000Sf (£60,000) fine after their Euro 2004 qualifier against Turkey at the Stadium of Light a year earlier.
Could the Serbian FA, then, reasonably be held accountable for the behaviour of Serbian fans in Nijmegen? As it points out, very few fans travelled from Serbia to the Netherlands for the finals. Those that did had to apply for visas, so Dutch authorities have their details. It shouldn't be difficult, if anyone can be bothered, to match up CCTV footage and police photographs - assuming they were taken, and if they weren't, why on earth not? - to those records. If Dutch police feel it not worth pursuing those enquiries, that is a matter for them, not the Serbian FA.
The problem is that the majority of those at Nijmegen supporting Serbia were Serb immigrants to the Netherlands, who bought their tickets locally. If they did not access tickets from the Serbian FA, if they did not even set off from Serbia, in what sense can the Serbian FA be expected to take responsibility for them? Does any person of any nationality become the Serbian FA's problem as soon as they don a red shirt and raises the three-fingered salute?
Of course not. The FA in England has long suffered responsibility without power, but at least the hooligans with whom it was dealing were based in their country. The Serbian FA did all it could, issuing a statement condemning racism and asking fans to be more tolerant, but this, essentially, is a societal problem. All debates of this kind eventually come back to the words of the then FA secretary Ted Croker in 1985 when Margaret Thatcher asked him what football was doing to keep its hooligans out of society. "On the contrary," he replied, "what is society doing to keep its hooligans out of football?"
A football federation can work with other bodies to try to educate and encourage understanding but it cannot take on the burden alone. Football has done a huge amount to change attitudes in British society towards race, but it has benefited in turn from changes within that society. The far right in Serbia is more tied up with nationalist agendas - particularly over Kosovo - than with the blatant white supremacy of its equivalent in, say, Russia, but it is still not exactly a force for tolerance. The Serbian FA readily acknowledges racism as a problem, but it must be recognised that it has a huge list of other crises to deal with.
This is a country in which nine club directors have been assassinated in the past decade. The murderers of the former FA president Branko Bulatovic, shot on the steps of the FA building three years ago, have never been caught. At least half the top-flight clubs are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Mafia involvement, money-laundering and match-fixing are rife. Transfers fees are regularly embezzled. Crowd violence, although waning, is still alarmingly common.
Given all that, it is hard to see what else the Serbian FA can be expected to do. There were suggestions in the immediate aftermath of the game that Serbian players had racially abused English players. The Serbian FA could, if it were really serious about taking a stand against racism, launch an investigation into the accusations, and impose lengthy bans if any player be found guilty, but at this stage it remains unclear how serious those suggestions were.
Equally, it might help if Derbyshire were to apologise for his comments. Prejudice is a two-way street.
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/20...ay_street.html
There has been understandable fury in Serbia about England's blinkered and damaging attitude following the countries' fiery Under-21 clash.
Jonathan Wilson, Guardian Unlimited
June 25, 2007 1:38 PM
"Everyone knows around the nation what sort of country they are, the fans and what have you," said Matt Derbyshire after England's game against Serbia in the European Under-21 Championship last week. If anything should shake Britain out of its anti-racist smugness, it is that.
I don't particularly want to have a go at Derbyshire here because he was speaking on the spur of the moment after a game that must have been distressing to him, both because of the racial abuse his team-mates suffered - from the crowd and allegedly from opposing players in the tunnel - and because of the brawl sparked when he scored as a Serbian player was down injured. What is worrying is the fact that it has provoked so little comment, apart from in Serbia, where there has been understandable fury.
I hadn't really wanted to write about this because I thought the issues were obvious. The reactions of the past week, though, have shown that they are not. Too many in Britain have responded by giving a sanctimoniously good kicking to the last European country against which it went to war - a blinkered and damaging attitude summed up by Derbyshire's comment - while too many of the posters on Serbian messageboards have retreated into the worst kind of ****-you isolationism.
Both sides have, confusingly, tied the issue up with Derbyshire's goal. "I say if you want to play fair, then don't make those racist chants or call people racist names," said Leroy Lita, but the issues are wholly separate. Racist chanting does not justify unsportsmanlike behaviour; unsportsmanlike behaviour does not justify racist chanting. They are not related.
To deal - briefly - with the goal: in the Premiership last season there was a directive that players should not put the ball out of play if members of the opposition were injured; elsewhere in the world convention says that if a player is down, the ball should go out no matter which team he is on. Personally, I think the English convention is the more sensible - it prevents abuse of the system by feigning injury, and if a player is seriously hurt, the referee can stop the game - but I accept that the rest of the world does not see it like that. A Uefa directive at the beginning of tournaments would be useful to clear up such difficulties, but in this instance you have to accept that the sides were playing under opposing interpretations of the law, and when that happens there is bound to be acrimony.
Beside the racism, though, that is a side issue. Let us, if it is possible after the mass outpourings of self-righteousness, return to the facts. A significant number of Serbian fans racially abused black England players. That is deplorable, and in an ideal world those responsible would have been arrested and prosecuted under whatever anti-discrimination or public order legislation is appropriate in the Netherlands. And that, really, is it.
The attendance, after all, was only 9,133. It wasn't as though the racists were part of an uncontrollable raging mob. If police and stewards couldn't identify at least some of those responsible and take action against them, then frankly there is something seriously wrong with security procedures at the ground. Still, the policing is secondary. The primary issue is that fans racially abused players, and that is unacceptable.
Uefa has opened disciplinary proceedings against the Serbian FA over the conduct of Serbia's fans and players, with the cases due to be discussed on July 12. The great problem in dealing with issues like this is the sense of shared responsibility, that fans of one particular team - and indeed the team themselves - tend to be regarded as a collective. Should a team and its supporters be punished for the behaviour of some of its fans? It's not an easy question to answer because at its worst extreme this attitude leads to the sort of indiscriminate truncheon charges Manchester United fans endured in Lens and Rome, and Tottenham fans in Seville. The logic appears to be that of a headteacher keeping the whole school behind at break because somebody misbehaved during assembly. If a little rowdiness puts everybody at risk, the theory seems to run, a level of self-policing will emerge. Whether that works is debatable and, purely in the abstract, such thinking should have no place in a liberal society.
At the other extreme is the peculiar justification for the decision to fine West Ham over the Tevez-Mascherano affair rather than dock them points - the argument being that to relegate the club would have been unfair on the fans, who had nothing to do with the misregistration of players. In both cases, it seems to me, a failure to differentiate between team and fans, or between fans and other fans, is dangerous. As far as possible, surely, individuals should be punished as individuals.
Where punishing the team for the behaviour of their fans probably is acceptable is when the offence occurs in a team's home stadium, or other instances where they could reasonably be expected to have control over the individuals concerned. The home team must take responsibility for security - even to an extent for the atmosphere in the ground - and where that is unacceptable they must take the consequences. When the referee Anders Frisk was struck by a missile thrown by a Roma fan during a Champions League game in the Stadio Olimpico, Uefa was right to award the points to Dynamo Kyiv. Spain, similarly, should have been punished more heavily than a 100,000 Swiss Franc (£40,000) fine after the racist abuse that tarnished their friendly against England in 2004, and England were lucky to get away with a 150,000Sf (£60,000) fine after their Euro 2004 qualifier against Turkey at the Stadium of Light a year earlier.
Could the Serbian FA, then, reasonably be held accountable for the behaviour of Serbian fans in Nijmegen? As it points out, very few fans travelled from Serbia to the Netherlands for the finals. Those that did had to apply for visas, so Dutch authorities have their details. It shouldn't be difficult, if anyone can be bothered, to match up CCTV footage and police photographs - assuming they were taken, and if they weren't, why on earth not? - to those records. If Dutch police feel it not worth pursuing those enquiries, that is a matter for them, not the Serbian FA.
The problem is that the majority of those at Nijmegen supporting Serbia were Serb immigrants to the Netherlands, who bought their tickets locally. If they did not access tickets from the Serbian FA, if they did not even set off from Serbia, in what sense can the Serbian FA be expected to take responsibility for them? Does any person of any nationality become the Serbian FA's problem as soon as they don a red shirt and raises the three-fingered salute?
Of course not. The FA in England has long suffered responsibility without power, but at least the hooligans with whom it was dealing were based in their country. The Serbian FA did all it could, issuing a statement condemning racism and asking fans to be more tolerant, but this, essentially, is a societal problem. All debates of this kind eventually come back to the words of the then FA secretary Ted Croker in 1985 when Margaret Thatcher asked him what football was doing to keep its hooligans out of society. "On the contrary," he replied, "what is society doing to keep its hooligans out of football?"
A football federation can work with other bodies to try to educate and encourage understanding but it cannot take on the burden alone. Football has done a huge amount to change attitudes in British society towards race, but it has benefited in turn from changes within that society. The far right in Serbia is more tied up with nationalist agendas - particularly over Kosovo - than with the blatant white supremacy of its equivalent in, say, Russia, but it is still not exactly a force for tolerance. The Serbian FA readily acknowledges racism as a problem, but it must be recognised that it has a huge list of other crises to deal with.
This is a country in which nine club directors have been assassinated in the past decade. The murderers of the former FA president Branko Bulatovic, shot on the steps of the FA building three years ago, have never been caught. At least half the top-flight clubs are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Mafia involvement, money-laundering and match-fixing are rife. Transfers fees are regularly embezzled. Crowd violence, although waning, is still alarmingly common.
Given all that, it is hard to see what else the Serbian FA can be expected to do. There were suggestions in the immediate aftermath of the game that Serbian players had racially abused English players. The Serbian FA could, if it were really serious about taking a stand against racism, launch an investigation into the accusations, and impose lengthy bans if any player be found guilty, but at this stage it remains unclear how serious those suggestions were.
Equally, it might help if Derbyshire were to apologise for his comments. Prejudice is a two-way street.
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/sport/20...ay_street.html
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