What the Danny Rose racism row tells us about football

It’s quite unbelievable that in this day and age racism continues to rear its ugly head in football; but what’s even more amazing is that a governing body of a Euro nation appears to be turning a blind eye to it.

The disgusting scenes witnessed in Serbia on Tuesday night, in a game which England U21s won 1-0, sent out a clear message that racism is still rife in certain areas of the game.

But dismay soon turned to bewilderment during the week when the Serbian FA refused to believe that racist chants had been aimed at England’s Danny Rose during the Euro 2013 qualifier, despite overwhelming video evidence suggesting otherwise.

I recently interviewed Paul Kearns of Show Racism the Red Card campaign, who was keen to stress that in most cases, the root of the problem lies in society rather than football itself.

Kearns may have a point; after all, there does appear to be a race issue across Eastern Europe not just in football but in society too. This was made perfectly clear in the BBC’s panorama programme prior to Euro 2012, which investigated the potential for racism at the tournament.

Fortunately, none of the issues raised in the programme came to fruition during the tournament, but the evidence was still there for all to see – there is a race issue in many Eastern European countries and football is used as a medium to demonstrate that.

However, it begs the question, if a football governing body are flatly refusing to accept their fans were guilty of hurling racist abuse – and have even went as far as questioning Rose’s claims – then what hope do we have of eradicating racism from the stands in these countries?

The answer is no hope. The Serbian FA sit at the top of the football pyramid in Serbia and must be setting an example, if they just shrug their shoulders as they have done up to now, how can we expect the fans to behave any differently?

While we’re not suggesting everybody in every Eastern European country is a racist, arguably the saddest thing about this whole row is that it’s yet another case in an ever-growing list of racism rows stemming from that part of Europe.

David McManus