Hegemony and Racism in European Soccer
An optimist would view the election of our current president as the epitome of anti-racism. To have a black/multi racial president only a matter of decades after the civil rights movement is to optimists/anti-racists movements the end of racism. I feel a smarter person would take the opposite stance. Thousands upon thousands of Americans were quite open about their displeasure with Barack’s blackness during the election, and subsequently voted against him. So what does that say about where we are at on this issue? My loose explanation of the 2008 Presidential election can be used as a simile to the condition of racism in European Soccer.
The International Federation of Football Associations (FIFA) and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), the two largest governing bodies of soccer, have both provided Anti-Racism programs in recent years. These programs include banners at nearly every international match played, player statements before games, and community involvement. Fifa and Uefa also have strict policies against large acts of racism at games, being known to ban fans from attending games on both small and large scales.
Michel Platini, former Juventus F.C. forward and current Uefa president enacted a zero tolerance policy towards racism in 2008, affecting all aspects of European football competition (Officials, Players, Fans, etc). In his address to newly delegated match officials in 2008, Platini expressed: "It is vital that your post-match reports demonstrate no leniency whatsoever in the face of violent, racist or discriminatory behavior on the part of players, club officials, technical staff or fans. You are the instruments and implementers of this policy and I urge you to be as firm as possible. The image of football lies, to a great extent, in your hands."
Platini’s former club, the aforementioned Juventus F.C., 27 times champions of Italy, twice winners of the Uefa Champions League, and most popular team in Italy (32.5% of the Italian Football fanbase, nearly 13 million people), are the most famous, now possibly infamous, club in Europe to receive penalties regarding racism. With numerous fines to the club as well having all fans barred from attendance at two matches last season as a result of extremist fans’ racial displays, one would hope that these displays would decrease in size and number continentally, as this is an extremely popular club that is being made an example of.
Much like those that take the optimist view of our own racial issues here in America, you would be wrong.
There are several points about this hot button issue that I would like to discuss. First, based on what we discussed in class regarding hegemony and the Marxist model of discourse, I will point out how I feel Uefa is not doing enough to squash the issue. Uefa’s campaigns are a hegemonic trick to make fans/players feel safer when attending events, even though what is being done is not really making any headway or having any affect on the racist communities/firms of fans in certain parts of Europe. Secondly, I want to talk about the minority perspective in regards to the racism. And third, I want to express a couple elements of irony that are results of the lackluster policies against racism in these stadiums across Europe.
I recently watched an in depth report done by HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, which originally aired June 22nd 2010 about the topic of racism in European soccer. The report was an update of a shocking 2005 report in which radical racist factions of fans were first exposed to the American public. That update consisted of interviews with American Internationals Oguchi Onyewu, Maurice Edu, and DeMarcus Beasley, and how they have dealt with racial incidents while playing abroad professionally in Europe. Onyewu, now playing for Italian club AC Milan, spoke of an instance in Belgium, while playing for his former club Standard Liege, having been called a ‘dirty monkey’ repeatedly by an opposing player. Nothing was done by the referee, but the comments were caught by cameras as the two players squabbled throughout the rest of the match. The player was later fined, but never provided a public apology, something that is common place here in the States when sports stars screw up. Uefa’s current policy regarding player and fan involvement in racial altercations is to fine the players or teams based on the severity of the action.
Most every racially motivated fine is nominal compared to the salary of the player or the income of a team, a mere 16,000 euro. Most players in Serie A in Italy average around 1.5 million euros a year, with the most expensive players making anywhere between 5 to 12 million. In the English Premier League, top players like Fernando Torres, Carlos Tevez, or Wayne Rooney are making over 120,000 pounds a week, 44 weeks out of the year. The EPL however, is not the problem. The English F.A. made several moves years ago to completely ban any and all racist chanting in all divisions of football. Teams in England are fined based on the severity of any fan or player racism, but there have not been any organized instances since the early 2000’s.
Viv Anderson, England's first black international, has repeatedly condemned Uefa’s tactics at suppressing racism amongst players. In 1978, the former Nottingham Forrest and Manchester United player became the first black player to dawn the kit of the three lions, 31 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in our own national pastime. "We have our house in order in the UK. Nobody is allowed to chant. It is when we go to other countries. To get rid of it, the lead has to come from Uefa. The fines have to be more stringent." Anderson, twice a winner of the Uefa Champions League, feels that Uefa should fine players/teams a million pounds for each instance of racism, in order to send a clear cut message across the continent.
Viv was the first in a long line of internationally recognizable players willing to walk off the pitch for racial discrimination, the likes of Samuel Eto’o, Thierry Henry, and Mario Balotelli being the most notable recent additions to have to deal with bigotry. Balotelli is the subject of the last major offense in Italian soccer, as he was targeted by thousands of fans in Turin, when his team, Internazionale Milano, was playing, you guessed it, Juventus F.C. The punishment handed down by Uefa was to force Juventus to play its next home game against A.S. Roma, behind closed doors. While that is a severe punishment, and may fit the crime, is it appropriate to bar fans from attending a game who are not apart of the problem? Is it Uefa’s intention to have the teams, or the fans themselves fish out the rotten ones in the bunch that are ruining things for everyone else? And who’s to say those inconsiderate fans won’t just show up in more numbers because they see they are having an affect on the sport, locale, and the continent?
In the same HBO segment, Thierry Henry spoke about how you could not understand what it is like to be harassed on the field unless you walk in his cleats. This age old sentiment is where I feel the lack of aggressive punishment and action against racism in Uefa’s politics comes to light. There are currently no members on the executive board of Uefa of any color or non white ethnicity. They simply cannot know what these players have to go through, so how can they govern it properly? Viv Anderson’s comment on this idea I felt was great. "There are a lot of middle-class white people running football. This is 2010. We live in a multiracial world. If you had paid 30 pounds to watch a match and someone like Eto'o or Thierry Henry walks off because of a few idiots, how would you feel? They have to clamp down on it. Racism should have been eradicated by now."
In the 2008 Michel Platini quote to referees I provided earlier, you will notice reads “The image of football lies, to a great extent, in your hands”. Uefa is clearly not doing enough to prevent or punish these occurrences, as they continue to repeatedly happen, and it is easy to feel that the media campaign along with the parade of children and star players with anti racism banners before matches is nothing more than a band-aid over top a continent wide laceration. It is not the actions that Uefa care about, it is how their response may or may not be viewed in the European media. In my opinion, I feel Uefa could do more, but is deliberately not, and maybe for good reason. You cannot change ideology overnight, and where the majority of racial protests and discriminatory acts occur, you might agree with why they are not. The most racist leagues are in countries with strong racist ties: Italy, Germany, and Spain; The WWII Axis powers.
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