Racism in football has been bubbling just under the surface for a while and to have thought that we would have done enough by now to eradicate the problem must surely have gotten a rude awakening with the events in our beloved sport. However, the recent events are not by any means out of the ordinary and indeed goes all the way up to the governing body itself.
I understand the reason why the Suarez ‘non’ handshake became a hot topic two seasons ago, but it was only a week prior to that Rio Ferdinand said he would refuse the handshake with Terry when Chelsea and Utd met due to the altercation with the Chelsea man and Rios brother. As it happened Terry didn’t play but with the Suarez/Evra incident there was an uproar. For my mind I am not even sure that Evra didn’t move his hand back away as Suarez was coming down the line, certain footage would suggest that is the case but whatever it was it certainly was blown up out of all proportion. It is not the first time there have been handshake issues within the Premiership. Mancini/Hughes, Terry/Bridge, Hughes/Wenger, Wenger and probably every other manager at some point. To me it would have been bigger of Evra if he hadn’t tried to force Suarezs arm back and then danced in front of him at the end of the game. In fact should Evra have been charged by the FA like Adebayor was when his celebration was deemed over the top? Not holding my breath here.
Courtesy: BBC
English football history shows many examples of racism and prejudice, and not always from players. Sometimes it comes from the highest levels of office and not just something from a distant past either. In 1885 a young man from the Gold Coast (now Ghana) became the first Black Professional Footballer and signed for Darlington at the age of 20. That man was Arthur Wharton who died in 1930 but it wasn’t until 1997 when his grave was given a headstone after an anti racism group campaigned for it and then in 2003 he was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame. Wharton never was capped Internationally and never won any major honors during his career, but currently has a petition online, the Arthur Wharton Foundation (www.arthurwharton.com) to erect a statue at his first club, Darlington in his honor.
Moving on through history, you had Dixie Dean who most famously played for Everton. There is a story where at halftime as the players left the field racist abuse was hurled at him. Dean apparently punched the offender and continued down the tunnel. No charges were brought. Strangely enough it would be fifty years later that Everton fans would hurl abuse at Liverpool player John Barnes. Fans chanted ‘Everton are white’ forgetting the player that had scored just under 350 goals for their club in 400 appearances and part of the League winning team, twice and FA Cup winning side all those years ago.
But is it not just the fans that players have received abuse from. Unfortunately famous managers and key figures within football have also been the source for some controversial comments. Steve Mokone while playing for Coventry says he was told by his manager, ‘We brought you over here and you are not satisfied. That’s the trouble with you people’. I do not know the background or setting for the comments but the South African interpreted this as being racist and left the club.
Viv Anderson was another player who had to deal with abuse, regularly getting pelted with bananas and other fruit was a target of racist chants. On one occasion he informed then Manager Brian Clough of the abuse and Cloughie just responded with Anderson to go back out and fetch him two pears and a banana. Something that would not be tolerated in today’s game. It was Viv Anderson though who also became the first black player to turn out in the white shirt of England, in 1978 he made the first of his 30 appearances for his country. That was over 100 years after the first England match had been played and with all the other players selected throughout those years it made the first black player chosen was England 936th different player called up.
That was back in 1978 though and so the ratio must be better in today’s game right? Wrong. Although England do have a good number of black players in their team there have actually only been 63 black players to pull on that three lion shirt (correct up to the Switzerland game in June 2011).
It could have been all so different for the English FA as in the 1920’s a great goal scorer by the name of Jack Leslie was called up. He later would receive a communication cancelling his call up as they didn’t realize he was a man of color.
Paul Reaney did play for England in the 1960’s but a decision is up in the air due to looking slightly darker in some and lighter in other pictures. That added with the climate of the time meant that his own club didn’t get involved.
This was all leading up to the 1980’s though when black players were becoming higher profile and the country as a whole was feeling more violated with immigrants and a Tory leadership that saw British troops sent to the Falklands. Racism was arguably at its highest and most volatile at this point and players such as Cyrille Regis and Garth Crooks were probably two of the many high profile non-white players to deal with such levels of abuse. Regis, once called up to the England team, was sent a bullet in the post.
It has always been bubbling under the surface through the 1990’s but in 2004 it reached the television. Ron Atkinson, a pundit for ITV at the time and ex manager and player resigned after a racist comment. Atkinson, believing his microphone had been switched off made a comment involving the ‘N’ word about Chelsea player, Marcel Desailly. Although it wasn’t broadcast on English TV the comment was still being broadcast to other countries. At about the same time as his resignation from ITV he also left his columnist job at a big national paper by mutual agreement.
Vivek Chaudhary reported in The Guardian of 24 January 2004 that a former England manager had “alleged that during his tenure he was told by senior FA officials not to pick too many black players.” The manager, Chaudhary wrote, “claims that he was called into an office where two senior FA officials were present and they told him that his England team should be made up of predominantly white footballers.” By investigating further this unnamed England manager is most likely Graham Taylor. He had more black players during his time as manager and would be the likely candidate to incur a ‘quota’.
Racism in football continues to be an issue, but not to the extent as it had been thanks in part to campaigns such as the ‘Kick It Out’ campaign. The repercussions of racist chants in grounds now can be a lifetime bans from Stadiums and criminal proceedings. Despite this it still continues to occasionally raise its head whether it is from the crowd or from players themselves.
For the FA to rule so severely on the Suarez case is nothing more than hypocrisy. Ask yourselves how many black referees you can mention over recent times? I get Uriah Rennie and that’s about it for me. There should have been another ‘non white’ referee entering the Premier League. Gurnham Singh, an accountant from Wolverhampton, became the first Asian referee to take charge of a league game in this country in 1989. Six years later, he finished top of a referees order of merit – but despite this he was never selected for the Premiership even though others ranked below him were. In 1999 he received a letter saying he had been removed from the national register.
Mr. Singh won a landmark ruling against the Football League for racial discrimination and unfair dismissal. He was passed over for promotion to the EPL despite finishing top of a referees order of merit. In an 80-page written decision, the tribunal said the Football League Ltd and the Referees National Review Board did discriminate against him.
Courtesy: All Sport/Getty Images
Back to Suarez and I’m not going to justify the guy but he does deserve credit for walking directly off the pitch while Evra jumped around as if they’d just won the title. Compared to a handshake snub this should have been the talking point. It was the same when Rio got upset with a Balotelli wink! All the talk in the media was of Balotelli winding him up with virtually no talk of Rio’s behavior.
The handshake controversy before the kick off was really a lot of nothing. There have been many examples of players not shaking hands including the famous Bridge refusal of Terry’s hand after the public news of an affair. There were also incidents with Wenger and Hughes, Hughes and Mancini and numerous others since the ‘Fair Play Handshake’ was introduced.
I think the media should certainly take their focus away from the non handshake incident and instead focus on racism returning to the terraces. Micah Richards is the latest target of abuse through a social media network, Tom Adeyemi, on loan at Oldham was also the target of taunts while playing a game. Even with the game, in which this non handshake too place, the police had to seize copies of a spoof fanzine which carried a cut out KKK mask. Also a man was arrested after displaying a racial provocative T-shirt.
So now we get to Fergusons’ comments in that post game interview and I disagree totally with his argument that Suarez is a disgrace and should be sacked by Liverpool. That isn’t helpful and just serves to stoke the fires in a divisive way and really doesn’t address the whole problem that has started to show its ugly head once again. One part of his interview I really do agree with though is the part in which he states that have come to far to let it slip back to how it was during the 1980’s. Unfortunately with the media attention focused firmly on a handshake that didn’t happen it is neglecting the bigger issue that has re-emerged.
Suarez was banned for eight games after the previous match up between the two sides after he allegedly made racist comments to the Manchester United and France defender. He served his ban and this was an early game back.
John Terry was also another high profile player who was caught up in the race row when he seemed to be caught on tape saying something derogatory towards the Queens Park Rangers defender, Anton Ferdinand. Terry was not banned but faced a court case regarding the comments, but still represented England in the following Euro Championships.
Certainly the FA will be hoping for a smoother 2013/14 season and hopefully we will not see these scenes again. It would be unfair of me however to just to look at England and it’s governing body, UEFA too have been unbalanced in their approach to racism.
For example in the Europa League game with Manchester City facing Porto, a couple of City players, Mario Balotelli in particular was subjected to racist taunts. The fine dished out for the Portuguese side for that was 20,000 Euros. In the next round of the same competition, Manchester City came out less than a minute late to start the second half and were hit with a fine 50% more than the one for Racist chants, 30,000 Euros.
It will certainly be interesting to see how the governing bodies regulate incidents like this at next years World Cup with the eyes of the World trained on them.
