As Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain warmed up at the Parc des Princes before their Champions League last 16 match, a hectoring English voice read out the familiar, if slightly misleading Uefa anti-racism message.
Misleading because both Uefa and Fifa have on several occasions had the opportunity to take a genuine stand by banning rather than simply inconveniencing clubs whose fans behave in a racist way. And misleading because its tone of pious inclusivity had already been gleefully trashed on the Paris Métro a few hours earlier by a group of people who were presumably sitting amid the cheese slice of away supporters in the northern corner of the ground. Perhaps the best thing to be said about Uefa’s misleading anti-racism message is that it was at least in English, which makes some sense in the circumstances.
It is hard to pinpoint exactly the most disturbing part of the violently racist behaviour captured by a passer-by on the Paris Métro on Tuesday night, and published shortly after on the Guardian website. For anyone who follows football with any regularity, the response will be horror, sadness and embarrassment – but not surprise. The sight of a group of English people shoving a black Parisian man off a Métro train, while chanting with a horrible, knowing leer about being racists is hateful and infuriating, as it is meant to be. But it isn’t surprising because for decades this kind of thing has happened, continues to happen, and most troubling, appears to be happening a little more now.
It is also hard to describe the people involved in this incident as “Chelsea supporters”, if only because this yokes together two separate things. Following a football team and subjecting strangers to criminally toxic behaviour are by any logical register mutually exclusive activities. Football itself is an athletic meritocracy. It is in its pure form the opposite of racism, an activity that tells you repeatedly that human beings are equal, that what marks us out are the qualities that cut across race: talent, heart, teamwork. Similarly the basic idea of a football club stands as a force for collectivism and shared purpose. Thirty years ago the first anti-racism fanzines began to appear on the terraces. Inclusivity and tolerance are also long-standing and entirely natural parts of the sport.
And yet here we are again, with football once more the rallying point for the most divisive and most poisonous. And still it isn’t a surprise, even for those who witnessed the bear pit racism of pre-modern times and have felt some encouragement, periodically, that it has gone. In the mid-1980s racism on the terraces was a kind of shared, portable anger. At Millwall the fans would chant “zulu” and worse while John Fashanu, forced to react one way or another, would play up to it, strutting about and rolling his eyes, producing a kind of desperate pantomime to draw some cheers among the bile.
Progress seemed to follow similar progress in society. Crowds are more mixed now, even more so in the Football League – and notably this week in the FA Cup – which is perhaps a function of cost and accessibility. But the old poison has still lingered on, a background ripple, clinging on through the lip service and corporate cleansing.
It must be said this is not a club issue. Even the most gentrified are affected: I have sat on a train listening to a group of Arsenal “fans” chanting about Auschwitz and gassing Jews. It is instead a societal issue. Football doesn’t make people racist. But it does give them a mouthpiece and a muster point, and a response is required after the incident in Paris. A stand must be taken. This cannot be allowed to pass.
It may be hard to identify the people involved, although the pictures look fairly clear. The various authorities could play dumb and plead an inability to establish any real connection between their own sphere of influence and racist events on the Paris transport system. But Chelsea in particular have nothing to lose here in taking a proper stand and going above and beyond the call of duty, not least when the club captain’s ban for using racist language – repeatedly denied, but never really explained – provides an unfortunate answering echo.
To their credit Chelsea have already made a firm statement unambiguously condemning those involved. They should go further. Stick a pole in the ground. Launch a bespoke campaign. Ask its fans for help to identify those involved. Make it absolutely clear Chelsea is not that place. The manager, the captain, the senior players, the board should all condemn this. Roman Abramovich makes great play of being a Londoner these days: well come on, Roman old son, act like one.
Chelsea can do their bit. But more importantly the French police are now confronted with clear evidence of a crime on their soil, while Uefa, the FA and the Premier League must also do what they can to assist in identify and ban those involved from football grounds.
None of this will cure racism in football or anywhere else, but a show of strength is required, a moment of concerted resistance after a week in which the very troubling and upsetting example of Arrigo Sacchi has also presented itself. A genuine managerial great, Sacchi has denied he is a racist after making some bizarre remarks about black players during a speech.
This kind of talk, from somebody so deeply embedded in world football, is in its own way just as disturbing as a group of ignorant thugs taking delight in being a group of ignorant thugs. Sacchi in particular was supposed to be above such institutionalised idiocy. Here is an intellectual pioneer, who decided football’s own prejudice, the closed mind against those from outside its stuffy little room, was absurd and self-defeating. More was better. Addition was not dilution. And yet here he is now banging on about national identity and skin colour, not to mention wilfully ignoring Germany in 2014, France in 1998 and every single Brazilian world champion team as examples of multi-cultural footballing triumph.
The images from the Paris Métro are unlikely to fade from the memory any time soon. But the only lesson racism really offers is that human beings are impressionable creatures, vulnerable to influence, short on imagination. Football cannot solve these problems but it can be part of the solution. It can say “not on my watch”: and it can try to lead.
