Translated material
Ball and swastika
That is why the leaders of clubs, national and international football federations, in addition to ensuring the principles of fair play directly on the field, have another fundamental task: consistently combating xenophobia among fans.
An example of how this should be done was shown by the management of Chelsea in London. On the eve of the Premier League derby with Tottenham Hotspur, a team from north London with a historically strong Jewish community that supports Spurs, Chelsea bosses called on their fans to refrain from anti-Semitic chants and chants. And they threatened violators with arrest. In general, even the most inexperienced Chelsea fans in national characteristics should have learned by now that the owner of their club, Roman Abramovich, belongs to the same people, many of whose representatives support Tottenham. And that their anti-Semitic antics are also an insult to the man who spent hundreds of millions of pounds to give their beloved team the record-breaking achievements in its history. (Under Abramovich, Chelsea has already won two English championships, and only one before him.) But the main thing is that the club’s management does not bury its head in the sand and is trying to fight back against everyday xenophobia in advance.
Numerous actions under the slogan “Football against racism” that FIFA and UEFA are trying to carry out are also fundamentally important. Club football has finally and irrevocably become cosmopolitan—the clubs themselves have long been “teams of the world.” Meanwhile, even in relatively civilized and democratic countries, players are subject to racial pressure. For example, Cameroonian Barcelona forward Samuel Eto'o, who has been playing in Spain for many years, recently admitted that he does not take his children to matches so that they do not hear racist slogans from the stands.
A football match is by definition an arena of rivalry. The emotions of football players and fans are heated to the limit, and “getting personal” when assessing certain episodes of the game occurs constantly. But precisely because football has become a way of life, in full accordance with the principle of Antoine Saint-Exupery “we are responsible for those we have tamed.” The best football players on the planet are the idols of a huge number of people. Great and small clubs are an object of adoration and worship for their fans. And when you are idolized, it is not only a pleasant feeling of fame, it is also a burden of fame. The burden of responsibility is on the fans. This is power over their minds. Using their power to suppress manifestations of racism and national intolerance is the human duty of the people who determine the face of modern football.
Unfortunately, our clubs practically do not react to the xenophobic antics of fans. At best, you can hear calls from team management to fans not to burn any pyrotechnic things in the stands, so that the club does not have to pay a fine later. But if, for example, Dynamo and Lokomotiv, together with law enforcement agencies, figured out whose fans beat up a Tajik in the subway, and banned such scumbags from attending matches at least temporarily, this would be a very right step.
In Russia, the wave of, to put it mildly, dislike for foreigners and non-Russians, unfortunately, finds support at the state level. Therefore, our football clubs, especially the leading ones, where there are many foreign players in leading roles, must respond especially sensitively to the pogrom sentiments of fans, not allowing them to realize their base instincts.
The ball and the swastika are incompatible. If you see an opponent on the field and a person with a different skin color or eye shape as an enemy, you cease to be a person and a normal fan. Football clubs are not churches. But they are still obliged to fight for the souls of the fans.