Tom PowellUEFA has demanded action be taken against racism in Spanish football, following recent monkey chants and banana-throwing in two La Liga matches.
Former footballer Gary Linker has led the condemnation in England, following the second incident of racist abuse in a Spanish football match in a week.
Levante’s Senegalese midfielder Pape Diop was subjected to monkey chants by Atletico Madrid fans, which he responded to by dancing.
“It is an issue that has affected me a lot,” he said afterwards.
“They called me monkey and I turned and imitated a monkey, I’m tired of racism in football, and there’s a lot.”
This mirrored a previous incident, where Barcelona right-back Dani Alves picked up and ate a banana thrown at him by a Villarreal fan
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This caused a string of footballers to post photos of them eating bananas on social networking sites in support of Alves, and the banana-throwing fan has since been arrested and banned from matches for life.
Match of the day presenter Lineker tweeted: “Spanish football must face up to the fact that they have a serious racist problem. They can’t continue to bury their heads in the sand.”
There have even been calls by British journalists for Spain to be banned from a national tournament, in the hope it will force the country to sort out its domestic problem.
But Spain’s national coach Vicente Del Bosque has claimed concerns over racism have been overblown.
He said: “I want to think these are isolated incidents. In football there is no racism, not at all.”
It’s not just football there were the incidents a few years back in F1 with Lewis Hamilton.
If this were English fans we’d be looking at a 3 year ban from Champions League. No doubt this will be paid lip service by the authorities as it has already by their national coach.
Yes Spaniards as a nation are rascist but not all Spaniards same as not all Brits. However in Britain action is taken by the police whereas nothing happens in Spain as the police are rascist too.
typical denial by the Spanish coach, deny something that is in front of your face. a ban from world cup or euros will solve the problem very quickly
Spain clearly does have a problem with racism and as a country seems to be very insular. It is a culturally ingrained inability to think outside the box and this is not only in football but other issues as well like how they treat foreigners who live in their country. For example, a prominent health minister once said that Brits (and other EU nationals presumably) move to Spain to get free health care. What do you think the reaction would be if a British politician said this on the panel of Question Time? This stupid and ill thought out statement suggests she has no idea that the NHS is free at the point of use and that nobody would move to Spain from the UK, or any other EU member state, just to get free health care. As always, this spiteful remark went relatively unchallenged.
If this type of inane behaviour happened in the Premier League, you can guarantee that UEFA would come down on the FA like a ton of bricks.
I’m a bit disturb by some of the comments as much as I am about what is going on in the sport. I agree that there needs to be much more done especially since a lot of this stems from ignorance and the belief that this behavior is just to rattle your opponents cages. Let’s not forget it wasn’t too long ago that this behavior would take place in the Premiere league too.
Be very careful when painting a whole country with a broad brush, your comments come off sounding just as ignorant.
FIFA needs to take a hard line and not just give lip service, when the head of the organization is in denial then it makes it difficult to have serious action taken.
I know this article was about Spanish football; however, it is not just Spain unfortunately that is why FIFA needs to get it together.
Jane,
there is no free health care in Spain, any costs incurred for treatment by EU citizens in the Spanish system are paid for by the government of the EU national’s country.
Stuart, quite, all the more strange that this woman made such a remark. Same goes for the EHIC cards which Spain was recently caught for not honouring.
No racism in Spanish sports- they must be kidding!! Even at a national level they won’t let Gibraltar participate in international events. It took 16 years for Gib to fight Spain until they got accepted to UEFA. Even at school level competitions, Spain has not allowed the Gib flag to be present. This is racism on a national scale!
Even Israel allow Palestinians sports teams to participate in various competitions and in the Olympics – even though the Palestinians are shooting missiles onto Israeli towns.
What have the people of Gibraltar done to Spain to deserve such institutionalised hatred?
Stamp out all racism where you can.
We definitely can’t talk. Have you seen the way the UK is going these days!
BNP/UKIP – whatever you want to call the current acceptable wave of hatred.
Off topic, but FRED, I’m really interested & fascinated why you like living in Spain? Anything negative you’re on it straight away. Loving it. The first on.
I can understand people who don’t like Spain and are back in the uk, for various reasons, most sounding extremely bitter on this website against Spain.
Do you like your life here?
Answer…
Derek, I have not posted on this thread yet, so stop stirring up trouble. That’s what trolls do. Fred B is not me, do keep up.
I did leave a sensible comment here that was not posted and it read along the lines that if I were these players I would select another Country to play football in. Using the word black is not racist.
Reap: How very Ukipian of you. Similar advice was offered to Lenny Henry a few days ago. That didn’t go down well either.
Hardly surprising really…
Stefanjo, I object to you trying to slur my good name, put your glasses on and read my post again. I said play in another Country, where did I say Africa etc? We are lucky to have the likes of YaYa Toure in the UK and that is why the best black players probably comes here, why would you want to play in Spain, even if it is for Barcelona etc. The best message a black person can send it by not playing in Spain because the country is racist. When you speak to older people in Spain and say your Wife (my Wife) is from South America, what is the first question they ask you – is she black or white, that is what you are dealing with. That type of question would not even enter my head. Once again, don’t make stories up, apology accepted in advance.
Reap: No apology. My comment was posted, yours was blocked. O.P. must have had a reason for that.Perhaps you should be more specific in your posts. Don’t forget, no one saw the original. I accept your protestations though, you usually make sense.
Reap,
for me it’s telling that the Spanish never considered that your wife might well have been indigenous, since the conquistadores did’nt consider the indigenous people as human beings.
Strange that when I lived in the toughest ghetto in Rotterdam (one of the best places I have lived in) all the Suris both Afro and Indian referred to themselves as blacks, does that mean they are self hating racists – I don’t think so. They called themselves black with pride.
Too many of the Spanish cannot get their heads round the fact that Cortez and Pizarro died a long, long time ago.
All my friends in Granada have a deep seated hatred of Isabella and Ferdinand, could be because they are all of Semitic origin, Arab or Jewish.
As it happens she does have some Italian background going back a couple of generations and probably looks more Mediterranean than many of the Mediterranean’s! She looks and is fantastic, I am lucky. Moving on, eating a banana may have got the headlines but I think someone stating they do not want to play in Spain because of racism would come across a lot better. I think it is a bit demeaning to eat a banana someone threw at you but I suppose it showed the world how far back Spain is but the UK used to be a bit like that with football so maybe there is hope.
can Fred B choose a different name please.
Or we could have Fred B and the regular Fred + ‘G’ (Grumpy)