Come on Europe – Spain Has To Be Punished

Sean O'Conor

Wednesday's Spain v England match was supposed to be a meaningless friendly international but has turned out to be anything but.

England's teenage tyro Wayne Rooney threw a childish tantrum to further tarnish the national optimism attached to his precocious talent.

For a few petulant first-half minutes Rooney committed fouls to make you wince, was yellow-carded and then embarrassingly pulled off before half time.

At least he has won the accolade of being the first footballer to make the icy Sven-Goran Eriksson lose his temper at half-time (‘teacups' or ‘dinner-plates' as they say in England).

Rooney seems to be the new Paul Gascoigne in so many ways and given Gazza's (aka G8's) now familiar tale, that is nothing to get excited about. A lager-lout little Englander in his own little world running amok in Spain like hundreds of his compatriots every summer.

Far more disturbing were the persistent and booming monkey noises aimed by large sections of the Bernabeu crowd at England's black players.

I am old enough to remember the exact same scenes at English matches in the early 1980s so we should careful of sounding holier-than-thou.

Indeed, have I been the only one to raise a wry smile at the breathless rants of outrage over the past few days from the very British tabloids who spout buckets of xenophobic bile on a daily basis?

Let us not forget that England invented football hooliganism as well as football and that almost twenty years after the Heysel stadium disaster, foreign national anthems are still routinely, and often deafeningly booed at England's home games.

We Anglos are no angels, and even if we harbour racist thoughts, at least, yes at least we don't shout them out loud in football stadia anymore. Therefore, to see racism rear its ugly head in 2004 at such a prominent venue in front of the watching millions and in such a brazen way was truly sickening.

That the Spanish coach Luis Aragones, who had recently referred to the magnificent Thierry Henry as “that black shit”, has so far failed to condemn the chanting speaks depressing volumes.

When confronted, he has only uttered some confusing reply about knowing what racism was because he remembered the colonial world.

Whatever the relative histories of England and Spain, what went on at Real Madrid's ground on Wednesday was wrong, and the crimes must be punished.

Whilst we can never excuse Wednesday's racist rally in Madrid, it is wise to realise that Spain's society is far less cosmopolitan than England's multi-racial melting-pot and like another fairly homogenous country, Italy, they have yet to live and breathe multi-culturalism.

Given that the English players and press have rightly made a big stink already, it will now be fascinating to see what UEFA and FIFA will do.

There remain several pockets of European football – the afore-mentioned two nations plus much of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe which stubbornly produce the sort of racist abuse which is rare, if not almost extinct, in enlightened Scandinavia, and the three most multi-racial countries in Europe: Holland, France and England. Those three societies reflect the diverse composition of their former overseas empires so the modern lack of racism is in a way, a beneficial by-product of something that of course had a lot to condemn it.

In England, there is a widespread belief that the authorities will let Spain off the hook. This comes from bitter memories of the punitive post-Heysel ban on all English teams in European competition from 1985 to 1990 following Liverpool fans running riot which led to 39 deaths at the European Cup Final against Juventus.

When there was clearly a hooligan problem across the continent, it was surely unfair to have barred all English teams including Norwich City and Wimbledon for example, from their dream of playing in Europe.

This discomfort with UEFA was fuelled by the age-old suspicion of Europe that has been a part of English identity since Hengist & Horsa, the first Saxon invaders, crossed the North Sea over 1500 years ago.

When two Leeds United fans were murdered in Istanbul in 2000, it was widely accepted over here that the punishment from UEFA would have been far more severe had the roles been reversed.

England, the game's founding father after all, spent the first half of the twentieth century joining, resigning and re-joining UEFA and FIFA, missing three World Cups in the process as it could not bring itself to embrace the world outside Blighty.

The ridiculous expectations heaped on England's statistically mediocre national team continue to defy all logic and owe more to the ancestral fighting spirit of ‘John Bull' and the ‘British Bulldog' than any level-headed reason.

With the untold riches of the Champions League now too tasty a carrot to spurn and half of England's top clubs now stuffed with overseas coaches and players, the days of isolation are surely over.

Yet still we tangle with the idea of football and foreigners. A suspicion of the foreign bodies running ‘our' game persists and I for one wait with baited breath to see if the Spanish FA's deserved comeuppance will smack of enforced behaviour, double standards or hopefully, wisdom. FIFA and UEFA's home pages are so far silent. Everyone witnessed the crime and we know who committed it.

We have reported it to the authorities and now we are waiting. Come on Europe.

Sean O'Conor

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