Real Zaragoza were fined a miserable E9,000 for racial abuse of Barcelona player, Samuel E’to on Saturday.  Last season RZ were fined E600 for abusing E’to and again last month E600 for racial abuse directed at Real Betis player, Robert.  Clearly Real Zaragoza have a history of racial abuse which makes the paltry sum of E9,000 even more deplorable.  The club claim they are trying to identify and punish the guilty fans. Given that the racial abuse was sustained throughout the game. How is it possible then that no one was arrested at the time.    There are stewards and police at all football games who should be monitoring what is happening on the terraces.  A couple of years ago I went to watch a Muric v Valencia game and ended up walking out because of the continuous racist chants.  The officials did nothing despite it being clear where the chanting was coming from on my side of the terraces.   

"In the 76th minute, when Eto’o went to take a corner, the crowd behind the goal started to chant repetitively Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh!; clearly imitating the sound of a monkey," said Esquinas Torres….."I stopped the game for two minutes to ask the club to make an announcement over the PA system to ask the crowd to stop making these sounds that were in my opinion clearly racist……"After the corner there was a penalty in Barcelona’s favor. When Ronaldinho went to take the penalty the same section of crowd started to make exactly the same kinds of sounds again.

In countries like Spain and Italy were racism in football is accepted and a weekly occurrence, the only way to stamp it out is to introduce sanctions that actually impact on the clubs and 9000 euros will not even make a dent.  There are a number of options available to the Spanish Football Association.  Fines that will affect the clubs,  fans identified during the game and banned for life or as Black Star Journal suggests, points deducted.   Although racism still exists in English football there FA and the individual clubs have made serious efforts to stamp out the culture of racism at games through affective stewarding by officials and other fans,  a strong police presence and the clubs having a zero tolerance policy. The "Kick racism out of football campaign"  calls the racism in European football as endemic with neo-Nazi groups targeting football grounds.  The police in the respective countries know fully well who these people are so to hear the Spanish minster of sport claim his government will back sterner measures to stamp out racism which is not some new phenomena in Spanish football or in Spanish society. 

Neo-nazi and neo-fascist groups target football grounds in Europe in the same way that the National Front and other far right groups targeted English Football stadiums as a recruitment ground. Among the worst affected clubs are Lazio and Verona in Italy, Paris Saint-Germain in France, and Real Madrid and Real Zaragoza in Spain.

The Spanish professional players association also needs to be more active and meaningful by working with the clubs and fans to educate people that this behaviour is no longer acceptable in the country.

Tags: Football  Racism    Spain