Friday, September 03, 2021

Why not throw them out?

 Hungary’s fans behaved as racist animals in their enormous defeat against England in Budapest. Besides the happiness that we should all have when Hungary loses, and the way we should celebrate when these people don’t qualify for the World Cup, this again brings to the forth the football organizers’ lack of willingness to do anything about it.

Firstly, if Hungary has already been ordered to play three matches without fans by UEFA; how come FIFA does not act on this? Do they not talk to each other? Or just assume that the racists are not interested in World Cup qualifiers?

Secondly, why such feeble punishments? Three matches without fans and some fine that they can pay with pocket change? Why not something like banning them from playing home games, not for a few games, but for years? Or rather, in my view, why not show that we mean to combat the scourge of racism by simply throwing out the teams of the tournament?! This would not be new: countries have been banned from World Cups for “government interference” or even using overaged players… 

I know some people would argue that a majority should not suffer from the animal behavior of a minority. But when the racism happens consistently at every game and there is no internal rejection of this behavior by the “majority”, then the majority is, sorry to say, complicit in the behavior. This includes everyone; also those in and around the team: your fans are part of your team, not just when they are great, but also when they are beasts (England knows this…), and so you carry a responsibility too; don’t’ turn away from it.

So these teams should just be thrown out of the tournament. 

Nobody will miss them.

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