Racism in Soccer

As I'm watching the thoroughly enjoyable Brazil v. Ghana match, ESPN's halftime show reminded me of the one of the most unpleasant, distasteful aspects of soccer--the displays of racism. While there are unfortunate, indefensible signs of racism from the fans, they showed a TV clip of Spanish manager, Aragones, referring to France's Thierry Henry as a "black piece of s**t." I've been really admiring Spanish football, but this is inexcusable. Aragones claims he was simply using whatever tools or methods necessary to motivate his players. Maybe Aragones think's it would be OK to place a burning cross in the middle of the pitch? The Spanish football federation responded by fining him about four thousand dollars. Big deal.

I've talked about soccer being great escapism, but when winning soccer games becomes more important than respecting human beings, we have a serious problem.

After being critical of Ukraine's playing style, I now see that there's a much more serious concern about their manager, Blokhin. Here's a quote from an article in the PalmBeachPost.com:

In Ukraine, national-team coach Oleg Blokhin told reporters that his countrymen should stay in their national league so younger players could learn from them "and not some zumba-bumba whom they took off a tree, gave two bananas and now he plays in the Ukrainian league." No apology followed. One South African paper said Blokhin "has the politics of a mentally ill T-Rex."

This comment is simply unbelievable and reprehensible, especially from someone who's team is playing anti-soccer. As far as I can tell, there hasn't been a problem with the fans during The World Cup. But if FIFA won't discipline managers for this type of behavior, how can they claim to take this problem seriously?

Go ahead and criticize US soccer style or its parochial sports, but I'm glad to note that there's no way a US coach or player would get away with saying such things.