Black and White and Dread All Over

Two months ago, Angel Torres, president of the Spanish soccer club Getafe, told a radio station that he wanted his white players to blacken their faces for the team’s next home game as a show of solidarity against racism -- an idea he quickly withdrew.

In a subtler approach, Dutch players will abandon their traditional orange shirts for jerseys with black and white halves, to be worn with black shorts and white socks, when they face England on Wednesday. The English, agreeing to a change in their national uniform for the first time in 133 years, will wear a special message and badge.

These actions reflect the varied, if occasionally clumsy, ways European soccer is dealing with an apparent upsurge in racism, which experts say poses the most serious threat to the sport since weapon-wielding hooligans terrorized players and fans in the 1980s.

The problem is not confined to Spain -- racial incidents have resulted in sanctions or fines in Germany, Italy, England and several Eastern European nations in recent years -- but it is currently getting the most attention here after a headline-grabbing incident last fall involving the Spanish national team coach.

The effort received a boost last week when three of international soccer’s highest-profile black players -- France’s Thierry Henry, England’s Rio Ferdinand and Brazil’s Roberto Carlos -- launched an anti-racism campaign that will include television ads in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

“Soon I won’t be around, but the game will still be around,” said Henry, who at 27 is one of the world’s top strikers. “I want to be able to go and see the game without hearing all this kind of stuff.”

In October, Luis Aragones, Spain’s coach, used a racial slur when speaking to one of his players, Jose Antonio Reyes, about Henry. The remark, captured by television microphones, set off a firestorm that could threaten Madrid’s hopes of staging the 2012 Olympics. In England and France, players and politicians called for sanctions against the coach.

“In the first place, I’d like to state that it was never my intention to offend anyone,” said Aragones, 66. “What I said can only be interpreted within the [context] of the squad and a training session, where my obligation is to motivate my players to obtain better results.”

Aragones sought to explain his remark further in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.

“Reyes is ethnically a Gypsy,” he was quoted as saying. “I have got a lot of Gypsy and black friends. All I did was to motivate the Gypsy by telling him he was better than the black.

“I consider myself a citizen of the world, I don’t care about their skin color. I feel I have been the victim of a lynching. I didn’t use the term ‘black’ with any racist meaning.”

The Spanish soccer federation is still considering whether to take action against Aragones, who remains on the job.

Fallout was felt in Madrid a few weeks later when England played Spain. Spectators, apparently angered by English criticism of Aragones, delivered racist abuse aimed at three of England’s black players, Ashley Cole, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Jermain Defoe, during Spain’s 1-0 victory.

“I was absolutely appalled by the reaction of the crowd and will be writing ... to the Spanish sports minister to express my outrage,” said Britain’s sports minister, Richard Caborn.

Tony Blair, Britain’s prime minister, pronounced himself “very disappointed.”

FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, investigated for a month before fining the Spanish federation $87,000 -- a sum that many considered slap on the wrist in a sport where top players are traded for tens of millions of dollars.

“This sanction is simply not proportionate to the offense,” said Piara Powar, director of an English organization called Kick It Out, which fights racism in soccer. “FIFA [has] missed a key opportunity to send out a meaningful message that racism and abuse is unacceptable.

“Instead we have the world governing body making contradictory and absurd comments about the need to parade guilty fans but not exercising its legitimate power.”

The latter remark was aimed at Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, FIFA’s president, who said in December that racist fans should be publicly humiliated.

“I believe you could stop the game, identify the people involved in this kind of foul situation, and then take them to the middle of the field to be booed by the rest of the spectators,” Blatter said at a news conference in Zurich, Switzerland.

So far, this has not occurred.

In other punishments available to them, FIFA, and UEFA, the 52-nation ruling body of European soccer, may order offending club or national teams to play in empty stadiums or expel them from competition, but the organizations have been reluctant to do so.

Officials say ending racism is their priority. For example, UEFA spokesman William Gaillard said the Croatian soccer federation was fined after footage of chanting fans from a 2004 match against France was examined and translated.

“We go to great lengths to investigate and punish clubs or federations -- we have a policy of zero tolerance,” he told BBC Sport.

Still, racist incidents have continued to draw notice in Spain, including these:

* Real Madrid fans with swastika tattoos made Nazi salutes and uttered slurs at black players for the German team Bayer Leverkusen in a European Champions League game at Madrid.

* Fans chanted abuse at Barcelona’s Samuel Eto’o of Cameroon and Ronaldinho of Brazil in a Spanish league game between Getafe and host Barcelona, prompting Torres, Getafe’s president, to make the face-painting suggestion.

* Real Madrid’s World Cup-winning defender Roberto Carlos was the target of abuse by fans of cross-town rival Atletico Madrid, which drew a $13,000 fine from the Spanish federation.

* Some of Albacete’s fans chanted racist abuse at Barcelona’s Eto’o, prompting a fine of $800. Other fans identified two of the offenders and each was fined $7,900 and banned from all soccer stadiums for five months.

Some say that a small minority is giving Spanish fans a bad name.

After the Spain-England game, the Spanish soccer federation condemned what it called “the racist attitude of a small group of Spanish fans.”

Said a spokesman for Spain’s foreign ministry: “I am certain that it was only a small element of the crowd, and Spain strongly rejects such behavior.”

Miguel Luengo, an editor for Spain’s EFE news agency, described Spain as “a country of open minds” and said racism was not pervasive.

“It’s idiotic to say that when it’s a small group of people in a stadium with something like 60,000,” he said in an interview. “There is no reason to talk of racism when it’s 15 to 20 people in a crowd doing that.”

Powar, who was at the game, said it was more like 10,000 people involved.

Ian Hawkey, a journalist for England’s Sunday Times who was also in the stadium, agreed.

“What happened at that match is much more serious than I’ve ever heard,” said Hawkey, who has been based in Barcelona for four years. “It was coming from unexpected people, middle-class people, and it wasn’t just men.”

Carlos Ferreyra Nunez, of the Spanish group United Against Racism, told BBC Sport, “Racism is a cancer that has touched every aspect of football,” adding that racist behavior could be seen “every week all over the country.”

Black players in Spain, Nunez said, have been reluctant to talk about it, even though they regularly experience abuse.

The negative publicity has not helped Madrid in its effort to be chosen ahead of London, Moscow, New York and Paris as host city for the 2012 Olympics.

“It was the biggest setback we have suffered in all these months because it was a setback that crossed borders,” bid spokesman Carlos Martin Usieto said last month. “But we believe it was an isolated incident. This country and this city are not at all racist.”

Powar said in an interview that the events of the last four months and the debate they have stirred could spark change.

“From our point of view, the public debate is very often the precursor to understanding the issue and tackling the problems,” he said.

Added Sam Lardner, an American who has lived in Spain for seven years: “In general, [racism] is restricted to the very worst elements of the crowd. Spain’s got some racism issues to deal with, as it’s not been the most integrated place historically.... They’ve got some growing up to do in this respect.

“Football can be an answer and a guiding light, or it can be a perpetuator of stupid behavior.”

In another sartorial swipe at the problem, France’s Henry arrived at FIFA’s annual awards gala in Zurich in late December wearing an interlocking black-and-white wristband, part of a “Livestrong”-style charitable campaign led by Nike called “Stand Up, Speak Up.”

“It’s about racism,” he said. “The players cannot do very much when they are on the [field], but this is a symbol of how we feel.... Maybe we cannot change the mentality of these people, but we can have a victory for an hour and a half each week, at least.”

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Jones reported from Los Angeles, Dillman from Seville.