I’M PROUD TO BE BLACK

Fani Ntlele

I remember watching a BBC documentary based on a match that took place in 1979 at The Hawthorns. It was the Blacks vs Whites game which was a testimonial for one of WestbromAlbion long serving player, Len Cantello. The documentary presenter is in the Albion offices with pictures of his heroes on the walls. This is how he described these “heroes” from their pictures, “Tony Brown, he feels like my uncle Tony,” “Here’s John Wile,I wish he was my uncle too, heroic figure. It just kinda feels like family, I can’t express it any other way.” “Ally Rob, ferocious, getting in some crunching tackles, crunching being the euphemism for fouls.” So he moved to the Black players’ wall, “Cyrille (Regis), look at those biceps there. There’s Brandon (Batson), look at that body shape, look at that Afro, look at the focus, look at the sweat on his legs, it’s beautiful. And there’s the late Laurie Cunningham.”

There’s probably nothing wrong with how he went about it, this also would mean there was nothing wrong with the Daily Mail headlines about two Manchester City players, Adarabioyo (21) and Foden (18). The article about Adarabioya focused on how he spent 2,5m pounds on a property for his mom without ever featuring for the first team while Foden is being hailed as having “set up a future”. It becomes a norm, to react to that is rare because, as Raheem Sterling put it, media play a huge role in fueling racismbecause they don’t understand what’s wrong with this statement how the documentary described Black players as compared to white players.

In the same documentary, none of the white playersremembers the day while the Black players still have fond memories of that day. In Sotho we have a say, “Moetsi walebala, moetsuwa ha a lebale” (The one who has done the deed may forget it, but the one who was subjected to the deed never forgets). It’s easy when something doesn’t affect you directly to say, “come on; move on. He didn’t mean it like that.”

“When I was on the pitch, we heard every chant, every monkey chant. Sometimes, when I was on the pitch, I felt isolated in so much as the opposition players would be giving me stare. My teammates were laughing”

-George Berry, Wolves ex-player remembering

how it used to be for him as a Black player.

“I was at Leicester City and the Leicester fans were racially abusing other Black players. I cannot for the life of me see how can they racially abuse other Black players and it don’t affect me. I remember the manager had a dig at me, “oh Bob they just very small minded people, ignore them”. I said you ignore them, because you can ignore them. But I said me, I’m out there, I feel it”.

-Bob Hazell ex-Wolves player on his experience with racial abuse.

On the 12 December 2018, a match took place in Italy, at the San Siro, home of Inter Milan, they took on Napoli. This Interteam has 5 players of colour in their squad and Napoli has two, and Kalidou Koulibaly, Senegalese international, is one of the best defenders in the world and up until the 80th minute,he received 2nd yellow card for sarcastically applauding the ref, he was by far man of the match while he was racially abused by Inter supporters with officials doing nothing about it.

Three (3) is the number of times that Napoli asked the Italian football federation to suspend the match, and when Koulibalyreceived his matching orders the players surrounded the ref in his (Koulibaly) “defence” gesturing that the treatment he received is behind his dissenting behavior. Statementafterwards from Carlo Ancerlotti, Napoli manager, says that they complained 3 times but the game carried on, “maybe we have to take matters into our own hands next time and stop play ourselves”.  Napoli owner had been saying a lot around that time, including how Juventus are favoured in terms of the referees who take charge of their games, but he failed to speak out on this incident.

Inter went on to win the match in stoppage time, 10 minutes after Koulibaly’s red card. They only received a two match stadium ban. This is a sports problem, and as such teams need to lose something more than just a few thousand Euros. Even if it’s an empty stadium that Inter would play in, it doesn’t change the fact that teams win and lose with their fans. The fans made the atmosphere in the stadium and in this case the monkey chants that ultimately led to the sending off of the best player on the day, from the view of the fans, helped to pave the way for the goal that won the match. Empty stadium is nothing compared to 3 points gained against a very good team with the most wanted defender in world football.  If instead of two games in front of empty stands, Inter received a punishment of 6 point deduction, the message would have been loud and clear. If for instance, Serie A deducted 6 points from Inter, they would have dropped to position 5, outside of Champions League position.

Black players feel isolated when they are being racially abused. Raheem Sterling, the Man City and England player, is by far the most outspoken soccer player on the topic of racial treatment black players get, he gets racially abused at home and out in other European countries.

“The shameful racist abuse of Raheem Sterling, Danny Rose and Callum Hudson-Odoi during England’s Euro 2020 qualifying match against Montenegro on Monday understandably triggered outrage in British football.  Sadly, however, it is not the first time that black England players have been targeted during games in the Balkans. The scenes in the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica, were grimly similar to those in 2012, when again Rose was subjected to monkey chants during an England U21 game against Serbia in Kruševac, and to Zagreb in 2008, when Emile Heskey suffered the same ordeal playing against Croatia. England’s black players are not alone. A banana was thrown at the Italian international Mario Balotelli by Croatian fans at Euro 2012, Partizan Belgrade’s Brazilian midfielder Everton Luiz was abused by FK Rad fans in the Serbian SuperLiga a couple of years back – the list is depressingly long.” The Guardian, an English newspaper.

In 2018, Roisin Wood, Chief Executive Officer at Kick It Out, told UNILAD incidents of discrimination – including racist and homophobic abuse – have increased by 59 per cent within the Premier League and English Football League compared to this time in 2017.

The wider reasons for such racism are obviously cultural and sociological, and go way beyond football, but that doesn’t mean football should put up with it or not try to set an example. The game should not accept this seeping into stadiums.

You might have organisations like “Kick-it-out” or UEFA “Say No to Racism” being set up but the problem will always be there because these organisations have no power to make a difference. Black players are the ones going out there to face all this, they try to tell the administrators that fining teams and stadium closures are not answers, but taking points not only take away something valuable from the team, but to fans and management as well.

When players run into the soccer field they experience so much. This field gives the joy, it gives them passion, it makes them cry, it makes them happy, it makes them angry, it makes them tired, but they never stop loving the sport, this is the field of dreams…

…but one thing for sure is…

…Racism is still alive and it’s getting worse