This week
Serie A is under fire once again for how it is dealing with racism.
Inconsistencies in acknowledging and punishing those who abuse players make
Serie A look like a league stuck in the dark ages. For a league that was just
gaining respect again after more than ten years of decline, all of this
negative attention is ridiculous. On the one hand, there is a big Champions
League semifinal tonight featuring a Serie A team. But instead, what everyone
is talking about is how racist and backwards Serie A is.
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| Milan once took a stand against racism... sort of |
The
events of this week shouldn’t come as a surprise. When it was time to elect a
president of the FIGC, calcio’s governing body, it was
the man who’d made racist, sexist, and other hate speech who was elected.
Not just elected, but fully supported by his peers, including Milan’s former
CEO, Galliani. This, despite four years ago when he supported the fact that Milan was a focal point about racism in football because another Ghanaian
footballer walked off the pitch. It is exactly this inconsistency that is the
most frustrating.
But
likely no one is more frustrated than Sulley Muntari this week. He was racially
abused by Cagliari fans on Sunday when his Pescara faced them. He said much of
the abuse came from children, too, which makes it even more shocking. Children
who were with their parents, who did nothing to stop their abuse. He attempted
to make the referee aware of the situation and have him stop the game, but the
referee completely ignored him and instead gave him a yellow card, which will
see him suspended this week. So he walked off the pitch, the only other action
he could take against it.
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| "You will take the abuse, and here's a yellow card for your troubles" |
But as if
that wasn’t awful enough, Serie A has since investigated the matter. While
conceding that the abuse happened and was audible, they declined to punish
Cagliari as the abuse came from only about ten people, which was less than one
percent of the people in the stadium that day. Additionally, they refuse to
rescind Muntari’s yellow card for walking off the pitch. This despite
punishments to both Inter and Lazio fans for their abuse of Koulibaly and
Rudiger respectively, because in those cases 80 percent of the fans in those
sections were participating in the abuse. I did not realize that the percentage
of people using hate speech was connected to the sanctions against it. Isn’t
hate speech hate speech no matter how much?
Thus far,
both FIFPro, the players’ union, and the United Nations, amongst others, have
condemned Serie A’s reaction to the abuse of Muntari. No doubt there will be
others. They are calling for punishment of Cagliari fans as well as the
rescinding of the ridiculous yellow card and also call for measures to prevent
this from happening again. But Serie A are defiant. Racist and defiant. Just
what calcio needs as they were starting to gain respect once again. Pescara
have issued a statement that they support Muntari completely, although his
teammates did not support him completely on Sunday and walk off the pitch with
him like Boateng’s captain led Milan to do four years ago. Of course that was
just a friendly anyway, so there really is no precedent in a competitive match.
Even Zeman kind of threw Muntari under the bus in his post match comments “Muntari left us down to 10 men, he left of
his own volition when we could’ve still had our say in the final minutes.”
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| Taking a stand against racism in Italy is okay before the match, but not when it actually happens |
For all
of Italy’s rich history and culture, racism is so pervasive that few see it for
what it is. The inconsistency is frustrating, despite showing that there are actually
some human beings within calcio. But if Serie A wants to grow and be
competitive again with other big leagues, they have to get everyone on the same
page: the FIGC and Serie A leadership, the teams, the refs, and especially the
fans. Because players won’t want to come to Italy to play if they don’t. And
not just players who might potentially be abused. All players who are human beings and want everyone treated
equally. Certainly as Muntari sits out this weekend, he will be reconsidering
his decision to return to Italy.
Serie A
also loses fans and respect from more civilized countries when they do dumb
things like this. Because who, in 2017, wants to watch players be abused for
their race, nationality, skin color or any other reason they don’t have control
over? Apparently only one to eighty percent of Italian fans, that’s who. And
depending on what number that is will depend on whether or not your fans are
punished. Because only in Italy is racism okay if it’s just a little bit. And
this is why we can’t have nice things.
This post inspired
by the music of NIN’s “Piggy”
Our next match is
Milan vs. Roma
Sunday, May 7 •
20:45 CST (2:45pm EDT)