Fascists in football (again)

There were two notable cases of racism/Nazism in European football this weekend.
In Madrid, the local derby match was ruined by Atletico Madrid fans making monkey noises at Real Madrid's Roberto Carlos. After a request was made over the public address system, Atletico's famously hardline neo-Nazi fans taunted the black player even louder. The Spanish football federation says it 'may investigate' this latest in a series of racist outbursts which have been drawing the Spanish game into disrepute over the last few months.

The problem is that the national sporting authorities clearly don't take this very seriously. The national coach, Luis Aragones, remains in his job months after referring to footballer Thierry Henry as "that black shit". Aragones has been condemned around the world – but not in Spain. Here, he has received the sort of support you would expect a victim to receive. This smacks of the sort of attitude that abounded in England in the 1970s and into the 80s whereby people could get away with saying anything if they could also say "I'm not racist, but…" or "ah come on! Everyone's saying that sort of thing" or, my personal favourite, "but some of my best friends are black!". Even in the UK, we have nearly eradicated this kind of flippant racism, and now we see it rising again.

The second instance was during the Lazio-Rome match on Saturday when Paolo di Canio celebrated Lazio's success with a big Nazi salute:

Adam, Rob and I agree that my version of the picture is much better. This guy is a complete disgrace: he's a Nazi sympathising hooligan, a scumbag and a very nasty piece of work (as if you couldn't tell!!). It is testament to the racist attitude of his entire club that he has always been like this, and they love him for it.

Lazio, incidentally, have only ever had one black player. So none of this is new. But it was, I thought, at least meant to be getting better.