• Submitted by: admin
• Sports
• 11 / 15 / 2007

Despite the renowned struggle against it, in soccer stadiums in Spain, Italy, England, France and Germany the chants and offences against black-skinned players do not seem to stop.

And it calls the attention that the German Football Association has been the first to promote that all its professionals clubs "the 36 that played in the first and the second division", commit the take out «in a symbolic gesture» a red card in the stadiums, as an act of denounce against racism.

In the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, the concept o fan «Aryan race» reached its peak, and some ethnologists ruled stated that all the white peoples in Europe came from a supposed Aryan people.

In that way, several movements with a colonialist and a nationalist character embraced these ideas, especially the German Nazism of Adolf Hitler, who «interpreted» this concept as a race peoples from a North European lineage to justify all his racist and militarist postulates.

But there is more. In Germany, the racist insults are considered a crime, typified as instigation to racial hatred, which is the reason why the problems of this type within soccer could end up in the courts.

Then, congratulations to German soccer! We hope other European soccer leagues follow their lead.

Racism is an ancient scourge. The new season only brings about new offences. Only in the present decade there are countless examples of these sleazy racial insults in European soccer fields.

In 2001, in a match Roma-Lazio played in Rome, extremist fans displayed a banner reading: «Team of Niggers, funds of Jews.»

What to say about the imitations of the movements and screams of gorillas, which were «in fashion» in the Spanish stadiums?

Cameroonian player Samuel Etoo, the deadly striker of the Barcelona club, tried to leave a game in a match of the Spanish League, because of the insults he heard in a section of the stands in La Romareda stadium. Both the referee and his coach made him think about it and he returned to the game.

However, Etoos departure was nothing new. A month before, in the Italian league, Messinas Ivorian forward Marc André Kpolo Zoro was the target of racist taunts from some Inter supporters. Zoro took the ball and went straight to the fourth referee for him to stop the match. But at the end, he came back, convinced by Adriano and Martins, also black players of Inter.

In a match France-Spain, French forward Thierry Henry run into Spanish defender Carles Puyol, who was sanctioned by the main referee when both men fell on the field. «Stand up, black monkey» was the vulgar phrase said by the Spanish technical director Luis Aragonés , to the French striker.

And read about the most recent... in Europe. Congolese player Matumona Zola has quit FC Brussels, due to racist remarks made to him by the clubs chairman.

According to Zola, Chairman Johan Vermeersch told him «you are no longer in your country and you must think about other things than trees and bananas,» when he lashed out at teams players and trainers due to bad results of the last few weeks.

But racism exceeds European borders. The president of the Football Player Association of Ecuador, Emilio Valencia, criticized racist outbreaks related to the national selection, which is now playing in the Latin American qualifying competition to South Africa 2010 World Cup.

Valencia regretted that Johnny Baldeón, player of the Deportivo Quito, had insulted his co-player Jairo Campos, when he told him that due to the presence of «black people like him on the team, Ecuador is as bad as they have been, qualifying in last place.»

Due to the color of their skin, players like Campos, Etoo, Henry, Drogba, Thuram, Zoro, Zola and many others have carried the outrageous heritage of the past. However, when they score goals, they become gods.

Source: Juventud Rebelde