So now it comes out, the news some of us feared we'd see at some point during the World Cup: Spanish football fans taunted the French football team with monkey chants as they arrived at Hanover's stadium. As has been mentioned before in these pages, racism in Spanish football is a major problem. This new disgrace is simply evidence that Spanish football supporters haven't done enough to root out the thugs in their midst.
After the monkey chants, as fans and teams prepared for the kick-off, Spanish fans jeered and whistled la Marseillaise (undoubtedly the best national anthem), in another display of thuggish stupidity and machismo. The time to start dealing with this problem is long past. I'm not sure it's constructive to say that it'll sort itself out, or that it's a minority of supporters. If the Spanish league can't start to act against these people, the problem will only get worse.
Depressing, both for what it is, and because of the little chance there is of the Spanish football authorities doing anything about it. Hopefully Luis Aragones will disappear from the scene now, he was given another chance during the World Cup to put things right on his remarks about Henry, and as usual chose to make things worse. The Federation in Spain is completely useless on most things, but especially on this – and UEFA always seem very forgiving in its attitude when they hand out the €500 fines. Next time it happens in Spain the players affected should walk – that will force the hand of the Federation.
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I was pretty disgusted to read about this too. The extent of racism at football matches in Spain is one of the worst aspects of the society. As Graeme says, The Spanish Football Federation constanly turns a blind eye to the problem or dishes out paltry fines. I think the best way to deal with it would be to suspend fans from supporting their team in the stadiums for a while. Incidently, I wrote an article about this issue a while back here.
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