Has what one might term the racist pendulum swung too far? From callous indifference to politically correct obsession? One asks the question, plainly, in the wake of the accusations made against Luis Suárez of Liverpool and John Terry of Chelsea. Neither is remotely a plaster saint. Each has what the coppers call form.
Terry has been heavily fined for coarse behaviour at Heathrow, jeering at American passengers devastated by the atrocity of 9/11, and famously urinated into a glass in a nightclub. Suárez, in the past, has bitten an opponent while playing in Holland for Ajax, punched out what would have been a winning goal for Ghana against his Uruguay team in the last World Cup and exulted when, having been sent off, the resulting penalty was missed. There seems no doubt that he called Manchester United’s Patrice Evra “un negrito”.
Well out of order, as they say, but was it really worth an eight-match suspension, plus (negligible for a football star) a £40,000 fine? Terry, meanwhile, is being prosecuted, not like Suárez by the Football Association but by the Metropolitan police, after a TV viewer reported his stream of alleged abuse against Queens Park Rangers’ Anton Ferdinand. Ferdinand says he didn’t hear it and Terry swears that it was taken out of context.
Long ago, I was the first senior football journalist to take up the cudgels on behalf of black players and have the short story to prove it. “Black Magic” concerned a young player discriminated against by a racist coach who had the last laugh when he joined another club and scored against his old team. Initially published in the Evening News, it was reprinted, to my delight, in the Voice.
My long-standing friend Paul Davis, a splendid black inside forward with Arsenal who should have played for England, has published a telling piece describing the racist abuse he first suffered when he himself was a young player.
I myself got into hot PC water when daring to say on an Irish radio programme that young black players from single parent families who suddenly found themselves millionaires had a difficult time of it.
“Gira e rigira”, it turns and turns again, as the Italians say. But why Alan Hansen should abase himself for using the word “coloured”, ask me not. We must all tread so carefully.
Brian Glanville is a football writer and novelist. He is a columnist for the Sunday Times and World Soccer. His novel, The Rise of Gerry Logan, recently republished by Faber, was described by Franz Beckenbauer as “the best football book ever written”.
A journalist in Nigeria has been arrested and is facing a libel lawsuit over stories detailing alleged corruption in the Nigerian Football Federation.
Olajide Fashikun, editor of the National Accord newspaper, was arrested last Wednesday following a series of news articles, in which he claimed a letter from FIFA president Sepp Blatter to Aminu Maigari on his election as head of the Nigerian Football Federation, had a forged signature.
Following the arrest, the offices of National Accord newspaper were ransacked, and the journalist’s laptop and hard drive were seized.
I’ve been reflecting over the last ten days on FIFA’s ban on the participation of Iran’s women’s football team in the Olympic games qualifiers, for failing to observe international football dress codes — Iran’s Islamic strip included a headscarf.
Once again the Islamic Republic’s infringement on people’s rights has excluded Iranians from the world community. Despite the obvious enormous disappointment for the team, my first reaction was one of hope.
Ultimately this action is one of many that will lead to greater discontent, pushing citizens to breaking point as an inevitable process for eventual change. And of course despite the ramifications for the individual women, for the leadership — whose limelight has been stolen by the “Arab spring” — it was just an opportunity to pipe up with anti-Western rhetoric and to re-establish its victim stance. Indeed Ahmadinejad didn’t waste the opportunity, ironically adopting the words “dictator” and “extremism” not to describe his own leadership or Iran’s approach, but to describe FIFA. As though Iran’s stance against such behaviour as essentially wrong was well established with the outside world.
The vicious circle persists. Whenever international bodies take a stance against the nation in any context, Iran uses the moment to show how unjust the West is, and no doubt garner support from sympathetic corners.
Despite the fact that the country’s internal political, social and economic health is in disarray and basic issues need tending to, the leadership continues to bury its head in the sand. The perfect demonstration of this bullish determination to follow its own path occured last week week as the government deployed 70,000 members of the country’s moral police to enforce its strict dress code.
As men (for wearing necklaces) and women walking on the pavements of Tehran are stopped, now so too are those in the apparent safety of their cars. The latest directive allows enforcers to force offenders out of their vehicles and confiscate their cars for one week.
The comments of Iranian passersby in this clip reinforce my claim that change can only come once the people’s anger reaches a peak. As my father always said “bashar be omid zende ast” — a somewhat less poetic translation: “one lives in hope.”
As a new campaign targets anti-Semitism in football, Brian Glanville asks if getting Tottenham fans to ditch the self-referential “Yid Army” chant will solve anything (more…)
