Search: 'anti-discrimination'
Stories
Julius Bergmann looks at the alarming recent rise in racism at German matches
Long before Anton Ferdinand and Micah Richards made allegations of verbal abuse from opponents during England Under-21s’ recent win in Leverkusen, German football had been shaken by a series of racially motivated incidents. Werder Bremen striker Patrick Owomoyela was branded as “non-German” by an extreme right party when he was being considered for the 2006 World Cup and Schalke’s Gerald Asamoah, another Germany player, was subject to abuse during a cup tie in Rostock. In Aachen a referee threatened to abandon a Bundesliga match unless offensive chanting stopped. For many, the real low point came when Germany fans sang discriminatory songs during the Euro 2008 qualifier in Bratislava in October.
The team were still a letdown, but England had more winning ways off the pitch, to the relief of Philip Cornwall
Six years ago, at Euro 2000, I was on the point of giving up on England. I had the masochistic streak needed to cope with events on the pitch, but not what came with it for much longer: the sullen contempt for anything and anyone who wasn’t English that radiated from so many of the team’s followers even if they weren’t expressing it in word, song, action. Some of these people seethed in their sleep.
The head of the Argentine FA is in trouble after spoiling a good record of tackling anti-semitism. But other abuse goes unchecked and unremarked, writes Martin Gambarotta
In Argentina, a bankrupt nation of 36 million people, everybody knows more than they say they know. Journalists, for example, have a habit of gathering news, usually in the form of gossip, which they rarely use in stories and often only divulge to mates at an asado, the traditional barbecue still common despite the economic collapse. Football journalists are especially aware that not all the news they have is fit to print.