Roger Alton
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This hideous stuff shouldn’t be happening. How about forcing Leeds to play their next three home matches behind closed doors? That should show the away fans. Make the clubs, the managers, the officials and the players deal with the tide of social problems sweeping through the game. When the Serbia Under-21 fans behave like racist thugs then force them to play behind closed doors. If banana skins are thrown on to the field, stop the game, find the perpetrators and punish them. Zero tolerance. If the game is disrupted, so be it. Take players off at the first sign of bad behaviour on the terraces. Fans will quickly start to police themselves once a few thugs are destroying the game. Use video monitors, and more thorough policing and stewarding; treat obscene chants in a stadium as you would on the street. Michel Platini and Sepp Blatter have to put their heads together.
Clubs as well as national associations must start to behave. Chelsea’s appallingly negligent treatment of toxic John Terry has done as much as anything to allow this year-old sore to fester right at the heart of our sporting culture. The fine was pointless, not just because it was so laughable but because it had no sense of re-education: far better to make him work with underprivileged black kids. The barracking of Rio Ferdinand by Chelsea fans at Sunday’s match at Stamford Bridge because his brother had stood up to Terry was both predictable and shocking. Tribalism in football overwhelms any moral perspective. Your players are always, excuse me, whiter than white. The other side is always wrong. Segregation encourages tribalism. If fans mixed as they do at rugby, they might appreciate good football whoever it is played by. Yeah, I know, dream on.
It’s easy to blame money, so let’s do just that. Once footballers started being paid obscene salaries, even in lower leagues, it broke the link with communities and warped any sense of duty and responsibility. Players and managers now seem to operate with little concept of responsibility and the moral boundaries of barbarians. They don’t have to think of anyone else so they don’t. And this sets an example to the fans.
Football, bloody hell.
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