The Obscurer

The headlines concerning the racist abuse meted out to Ashley Cole and Shaun Wright-Phillips last night have neatly obscured the England football teams very poor showing against Spain yesterday. However, the racism on display does merit some comment I think; certainly more than the England team’s performance, which I am happy to gloss over.

In many ways the actions of the crowd were a throwback to fifteen years ago or more, when racist chanting was commonplace in England. There have been predictable calls for the Spanish Football Federation to gets its house in order, and for FIFA and UEFA to take strong action. There is, implicit in this, a sort of pride amongst English commentators at how racist chanting has been tackled in this country, and how successful the action taken by the authorities and the “Let’s Kick Racism Out Of Football” campaign has been here. I wonder, however, just what the Spanish can do to prevent this sort of thing. Luis Aragones, the Spanish manager, could certainly do more; a statement condemning the chanting would be a step in the right direction, and he certainly hasn’t set a good example to the fans with his well reported comments on Thierry Henry. But if the problem is as widespread across Spain as is suggested by Carlos Ferreyra Nunez, co-ordinator of Spain’s “United Against Racism” group, then the odd stupid comment by the national manager is unlikely to make much difference. The problem surely is a cultural one.

What should the Spanish do then; should they take a leaf out of the English book? If so, it is useful to remember what the situation was like in this country a few years ago. Personally, I don’t recall hearing any racist chanting when I first started going to watch Manchester City many, many years ago, at least from the home fans. Were City fans a remarkably tolerant lot? Not at all. You certainly heard racist comments, as you do everywhere, then as now. There was, however, always the sickening sound of the crowd hissing whenever we played Spurs; to the uninitiated, I should explain that Spurs are identified by some as being a Jewish club, and the hissing (scarcely believable as you may find it) was a reference to the gas chambers, to the holocaust. So no, City fans were far from perfect; they just didn’t make monkey noises.

Still, it came as quite a shock one day when I went to watch Newcastle United at St James’s Park. I was at a boring conference in Gateshead, and by day three I was so fed up I decided to bugger off to watch Newcastle play Sheffield United in a top of the table clash in the old old Second Division. I was stood in the famous Gallowgate End, and I think my mate and I were the only two people who didn’t chant every time Brian Deane or Tony Agana touched the ball. It seemed as if the whole crowd was a seething pit of racial hatred.

How was this situation turned around? Where has all the racism gone? Have the FA, the “Lets Kick Racism…” movement and the Government managed to persuade the Newcastle fans of the evils of racism? They probably haven’t done any harm, but the biggest catalyst for change with the Newcastle fans was probably the signing of Andy Cole. It is pretty silly making monkey noises at the opposition when you have you own black player. This is probably why racist chanting was never a problem at Man City, even though Anti-Semitic hissing was; City were in the vanguard of introducing black players into their team, so the bigots just never got a chance to throw their bananas. Dave Hill’s wonderful book “Out of his Skin” chronicles how John Barnes’s transfer to Liverpool miraculously rid them of their racism problem. He is also particularly good in commenting on how complicit the press were; how, with the odd notable exception, racist abuse was just ignored back in the dark days, a sharp contrast to the moral hand-wringing we see today when the press are happy to criticise the Spanish. Interestingly, Nunez makes the same complaint about the current Spanish media “generally sidestepping the racism issue”. The signing of John Barnes by Liverpool also showed their Merseyside rivals Everton in sharp relief at the time, and for a while they were considered one of England’s most racist clubs. They probably weren’t, they just didn’t happen to have any black players; but Earl Barrett amongst others changed all that.

I am not sure, then, as to what lessons the Spanish can actually learn from the English example, or how they should tackle their own problems. Of course racist chanting should be condemned, that goes without saying; but as I have stated, I am not sure quite what effect well meaning anti-racism campaigns actually achieve.

There may be specific Spanish problems, such as Nunez’s allegation that domestic managers fuel “the problem by giving tickets to passionate ‘ultra right-wing’ fans”, which may need to be tackled. But ultimately football is just a part of society: if there is racism in society, then there will be racism on the terraces.

And it would be complacent to think that we have solved all of our problems in this country; racism is still about, it just doesn’t manifest itself in the chanting of the crowd. Personally, where I sit to watch City, in the rarefied atmosphere of the East Stand Upper Tier, you barely even hear the sick chants of “Munich ’58” anymore, thank God; but then you don’t hear much chanting of any kind anymore, since the move to all seater stadia. The clamp down on hooliganism in general has also resulted in some of the nastier elements of society remaining outside the ground, so overt racism inside the ground is probably reduced as a consequence. But racism is still about in our society, it is just that to some extent we have moved on; Kosovan, Afghan and Iraqi asylum seekers are more likely targets for racial hatred these days.

But for now, let’s all concentrate on the failings of the Spanish, eh? For one thing, it may all be of assistance to London in its Olympic Bid; there have already been comments questioning how Madrid can be awarded the 2012 games after the behaviour of their fans. This is great news, following on, as it does, from the New York bid supposedly being damaged because the American TV networks didn’t cover the Paralympics. It is beginning to look like two down, two to go; now all we need is for Russia to force all female athletes into being housewives who are chained to their domestic appliances, and for France to make it illegal for homosexuals to play sport, and that should deal with the Moscow and Paris bids. Then hey presto; the field is left clear for London 2012, home of the first politically correct Olympic Games.

Now that the Olympics and Paralympics in Athens have closed, I would like to congratulate the Greeks on an excellent games. I am particularly happy at the way things have turned out as I was getting pretty fed up in the run up to the Olympics with the constant criticisms. I don’t think I have ever heard such stick aimed at the organization of the games in previous years, and I didn’t think it was fair. I am sure every city which tries to organise such a logistical task will encounter some problems, but from the start it almost seemed as if people expected and wanted Athens to fail, based on the prejudiced stereotypical image of the Greeks’ lack of organization. You would have thought that the Greek football team’s success in Euro 2004, surely a triumph of organization over ability, would have had people thinking twice, but all the way up to the Olympics we heard story after story about Athens’ lack of preparedness. That these have almost all turned out to be unfounded must give the organisers great pleasure.

In relation to the Paralympics in particular I was somewhat mystified by the Daily Mail’s front page comment the other day, questioning whether or not the BBC should be covering these “athletes” sports. Their quotation marks. David Thomas in the Telegraph made the same point. I imagine they may have changed their tune somewhat as the medals have piled in for the British team, but why shouldn’t the BBC or anyone else cover these sports? Paralympians are surely every bit as dedicated as their able bodies colleagues. In some cases, for example Basketball, I find the disabled version is a much better spectacle. There may not be the same audience for the Paralympics, and that is reflected in the lower profile it receives, but we are still seeing the top athletes in the world competing in their chosen sports; and in many cases they are more clearly sports than the sort of thing that passes for sport in the Olympics (synchronized swimming always springs unfairly to mind here). Thomas states we do not engage with Paralympians in the way we get worked up over able-bodied competition; but I cannot say I was exactly on the edge of my seat when the British yacht crews brought home the Gold medal. Of course, being the fastest person in the T5 wheelchair sprint does not have the same cache as the winner of the 100 metre sprint being the fastest person ever, but we don’t dismiss Kelly Holmes fantastic achievement on the grounds that she is only a woman, and the male runners would have hammered her in a straight race. And as for watching sport just to see the finest athletes, if I went to the City of Manchester Stadium every other week expecting to watch the best football team in the world, I would be very disappointed. (Actually, I did last week, but only because we were playing Arsenal).

The Daily Mail view is one that NBC appears to have echoed in the United States. From having 300 journalists in Athens for the Olympics, they have had not one for the Paralympics. Richard Caborn, the Sports Minister, thinks this will count against New York’s bid for the 2012 Olympics. This may well be a bit harsh on the New York bid team; I doubt they have much say on the scheduling policy of NBC. Unfortunately, the last time the games were in the US, in Atlanta, the Paralympics were widely considered a disaster. According to Tanni Grey-Thompson in an interview with Des Lynam last week, the organisers had no interest in the Paralympic Games at all; in fact half the facilities from the Olympics had been packed up by the time the Paralympics were underway, and there were barely any spectators. New York’s bid should be judged on it’s own merits, not based on the actions of NBC or the Atlanta organisers, but all the bidding cities’ plans for the Paralympics should play a part in the decision making. You wouldn’t expect a city which was not interested in the Olympics to be awarded the games, and so, I feel, should it be with the Paralympics.

However, if Caborn is right and this does affect New York’s bid, then it is obviously great news for London. Now we just need someone from Paris, Madrid and Moscow to similarly balls up and the games will be ours for the taking.

Update 2/9/04: to understand the reference to the eagle joke on my comment on this post, click here, on the excellent The Filter^ site.

Now that the dust has more or less settled, what was the most notable thing about the whole Sven/Faria/Palios debacle?
For one thing, there was the ridiculous amount of press coverage, across all medias, given to unremarkable consenting relations between adults, but that should no longer surprise us.

There was further confirmation of Sven’s ability to avoid being drawn into the maelstrom by just shrugging his shoulders and keeping his counsel, but again we are getting used to this. (When I think of Sven, I always imagine him being the sort of mate who would get you involved in a pub fight, but who himself would walk away unscathed and uninvolved in the ensuing fracas).

We do not need to be told that the Football Association is just about as inept and badly run an organisation as there is, but even by their standards the degree to which they shot themselves in their collective feet is staggering. And in Colin Gibson they had perhaps the only Press Secretary with a benign view of the tabloid press. Only the fact that he is not the Colin Gibson, who served Manchester United with little distinction in the 80’s prevented his intervention from being the most hilarious part of the whole affair.

But for me, it is the involvement once again of Max Clifford which really takes the biscuit. Not that he was the inevitable publicist for Faria Alam, but that the press once again ran to interview him in his position as an expert. Why is there a need for TV, Radio and Newspapers to massage this man’s ego everytime they want a commentary on how much money an aspiring Z list celebrity can make if they play their cards right. I have yet to see him being interviewed about the future for Nadia from Big Brother 5, but I dare say that is just good fortune on my part.

This has got to stop. One day, please, I would love to be listening to BBC FiveLive or something like that, discussing the latest Pop Idol hopeful or whatever, and for them to announce “and later on in the programme we will not, under any circumstances, be asking Max Clifford for his opinions.”

I fear I am wasting my time; does he, I wonder, insist on his little cameo appearances, threatening producers and journalists with his “black book of dark secrets and skeletons in the closet” unless they indulge him?