As an avid football fan I could watch the game 24/7, unfortunately there is sleeping, eating, working and the occasional going to the bathroom. Luckily I live in Buenos Aires,
Argentina a nation that oozes football. Not only do I have the possibility of watching the Argentine league, but I also have the chance to see matches from all over the globe including England, Italy, France, Spain, The Netherlands and others. The passion for the game here is mind-blowing, one of the greatest derbies in the world is played at least four times a year, if we include the not important but nonetheless passionate Summer Cups, being
River vs.
Boca. It’s at the height of the
Everton vs.
Liverpool, Roma vs. Lazio, Barcelona vs. Real Madrid, Rangers vs. Celtic, Panathinaikos vs Olympiakos, PSG vs. Marseille, Ajax vs. Feyenoord derbies. The build-up to the match weeks before, the colour, the flags, the drums, the singing and the outrageous racist chants are all part of this “Superclasico”.
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| Suarez and Evra go head to head. |
Racist chants are very common in Latin countries, unlike in the UK where everything is being done to abolish racism on and off the pitch. Here, however, little is being done. Only recently, while watching a River vs. Boca Summer Cup match, one could hear the River Plate supporters chanting “They are all from Bolivia and Paraguay”. It is extremely degrading, in Argentina, to call someone a Bolivian or Paraguayan, due to economic limitations, skin colour. The referee, when hearing these chants, decides to stop the match until the chanting ceases, when the chanting ceases the match restarts, when the match restarts so do the chants. Here’s when a typical trait of an Argentine is seen. The referee, instead of ending or stopping the match again says to the players and people in charge: “There’s nothing I can do about it, let’s carry on.” So the match goes on, the flags wave, the drums beat and the outrageous racist chants continue, all for the love of the game. It is part of the culture and something that will take time, if ever, to change.
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| Handshake incident. |
The English Football League now has more foreigners than ever before, players come and go from different countries across the globe and not only have to adapt to a different style of play but also have to adapt to a different style of life, with the cultural and traditional ideologies that come with it. This takes time, sometimes quite a while. The fans have also had to adapt and that is also taking time - who can forget the banana peels thrown at John
Barnes in 1987 - we seemed to have moved so far on since then, but it is still something very difficult to abolish. Recently, in the UK, there have been two on-field racist incidents: the
Suarez-Evra and the
Terry-Ferdinand affairs both in October 2011. And though these were both similar they were both very different too. In the Terry-Ferdinand affair both players were English, they both know what was said and what wasn’t and in what context the words were used, therefore being a much easier case to study. On the other hand we have a Uruguayan and a Frenchman. I know, by fact, that the word “negrito” used by Suarez to Evra, in Latin countries means “mate”, not always in a friendly way, but nothing more than that. Suarez comes from a background of controversial incidents which made it all the more easy to punish him. Suarez has had dark-skinned teammates, dark-skinned family and friends. It is very hard to believe he would use the word in a derogatory sense. Moreover, when "El Pistolero's" ban came to an end and Liverpool played against Manchester United with Suarez on one side and Evra on the other there was the hand-shake incident. Now, I wonder, if I were the victim of racial abuse I would never want to shake hands with the perpetrator of such offense and, if, let’s say, I was falsely accused of racially abusing someone I definitely wouldn’t shake hands with the person accusing me of it. Finally, on this matter, I have often been called “negrito” by people in the streets in Argentina and I’m extremely white, should I take this as an offense? Should I consider it an ironic joke? Or should I take it as it is, part of the culture.
