Soccer’s racism problem proves difficult to kick from game

The Paris prosecutor’s office later said it was investigating the incident, which occurred at the Richilieu-Druout station.

Chelsea FC, meanwhile, released a statement roundly condemning the incident apparently involving its fans.

“'Such behavior is abhorrent and has no place in football or society. We will support any criminal action against those involved,” the club said, adding: “Should evidence point to the involvement of Chelsea season ticket holders or members the club will take the strongest possible action against them including banning orders.”

Banning known offenders from home stadiums and identifying them to police departments in other cities to which a team was traveling was widely used in the past as part of an effort to eradicate the fan thuggery that had seen English clubs banned from European competition in the late 1980s. 

With the Paris footage being carried by news outlets across the world — the English Premier League in which Chelsea plays has a global TV audience estimated at 4.7 billion people — British Prime Minister David Cameron added his voice to outcry, describing the incident as “extremely disturbing and very worrying.”

The rush to condemn the actions of a few fans reflects the ongoing battle of those who run the game to tackle racism in and around the game. Racist outbursts among English fans has declined markedly over the years — roughly dovetailing with the decline of soccer hooliganism since the lows of the 1980s — but Tuesday’s incident was a reminder that the job is far from complete. And racist abuse directed at black players from the bleachers remains commonplace in a number of European leagues. 

“Clearly it sends out a strong signal to, not only Chelsea, but the whole of football that you cannot be complacent and think the actions you’re taking are sufficient to deal with the scourge of racism, sexism, homophobia and anti-Semitism,” said Lord Herman Ouseley, the chair of Kick It Out, an organization dedicated to battling racism in soccer. “We know that prejudice is on the increase and that in itself leads to hateful attitudes and this sort of conduct,” he said.

But racism continues to rear its head, and not only among fans. Chelsea captain John Terry was briefly banned in 2012 for racially abusing Queens Park Rangers defender Anton Ferdinand, while then-Liverpool striker Luis Suarez received an even longer ban the previous year for using a racial epithet when addressing Manchester United's Patrice Evra. 

And just a day before the Paris Metro incident, former Italy national team coach Arrigo Sacchi sparked outrage when, after proclaiming that "I'm certainly not a racist", he complained that "there are too many black players" in Italy's youth system, calling that a sign that the nation lacked "dignity and pride." 

France's national team coach Laurent Blanc found himself in hot water in 2011 after criticizing the preponderance of black players in the French youth system, and calling for more emphasis on players who share "our history, our culture."  

And Sacchi and Blanc's idea that black Italians or Frenchmen were somehow foreign certainly resonates with at least some fans: In 2013, the Italian Football Federation fined Roma FC $65,000 after its supporters racially abused then AC Milan player Mario Balotelli. Despite being a star player on the national team, Balotelli had routinely been subjected to a chants from fans proclaiming that "there's no such thing as a black Italian." The Italian federation subsequently elected as its president Carlo Tavecchio, who during his election campaign to be the body’s chief had referred to foreign players in Italy “eating bananas."

In December, Russian supporters of the Spartak Moscow club heckled Guelor Kanga, an opposing player for FC Rostov who plays for Gabon. In that case, as well as previous case of racial abuse in Russia against black player Christopher Samba in September, the players were penalized alongside the clubs for giving racist fans the middle finger.

The first generation of black players to have made the breakthrough into Europe's leagues a generation ago routinely suffered racial taunting, including the making of ape sounds and throwing bananas onto the field. That racist gesture continues, prompting last year's famous anti-racist hashtag campaign after Barcelona FC player Dani Alves responded to having a banana thrown at him by Villareal fans by calmly peeling it and taking a bite before delivering a corner kick. The subsequent #weareallmonkeys hashtag exploded, prompting dozens of soccer stars to post selfies of themselves eating bananas.

A less playful response came from AC Milan's Ghana star Kevin-Prince Boateng in 2013, when he led his teammates off the field and refused to complete a match after being targeted by persistent racist abuse by a section of the crowd. Boateng's action led some leading black players to warn that the frequency of racist abuse in stadiums in Russia — and the players' growing intolerance of such behavior — could disrupt the World Cup tournament scheduled for that country in 2018.

The latest incident in Paris merely shows that despite decades of campaigning, racism remains an ugly and persistent blight — even if the urgency of eradicating racism is now a point of consensus throughout European soccer.