Bulgarian football fans

i hear you’re all racists now

???14 Oct 19 20:35Reply

Report

 | DM

Tbf it looks like all the nazi khvnts got up and left the stadium before they could ne arrested

were there many of them? i thought brexters don’t tend to leave the country these days?

Have you been at the cooking sherry or something?

On what planet are journalists covering a controversial subject in any way nearly as bad as a bunch of guys doing monkey chants, ape gestures and nazi salutes?

FA officials saying that chants and incidents were clearly occurring in second half, but UEFA refused to act because they were isolated and not mass incidents.

At the risk of sounding like a philosophical w**ker, how many isolated incidents need to occur before they become a mass incident?

This felt inevitable tonight, almost as if the gauntlet had been laid down by England’s comments before the game about walking off. Not that I am attaching any blame on England whatsoever.

Calling off a game could well be a public order issue. fook these shit fines, the only sanctions for racism based on severity should be 1. Closed doors for the next campaign 2. Docked points 3. Banned from next qualifying campaign.

I also think that Greg Clarke spoke poorly, and that England let themselves down a bit. 

They had the opportunity to walk off and have the second stage of the protocol initiated. They chose not to when offered, despite suggesting before the game that they would have walked off if UEFA didn’t deal with racism strongly enough (and thereby forfeit the game). 

They decided to ensure that the matter wasn’t escalated, even through UEFA’s joke protocol. Would it have been the same if they were 3-0 down not 3-0 up? I don’t think so. 

I applaud what Kickitout do, but think they are sensationalist at times (as somebody who has gone to football almost weekly for 20 years). However, I think they are much more on the money than Greg Clarke and co tonight. 

They’ve had some pretty serious racism problems for a while now, exacerbated by nationalist parties advising them to arm themselves against a flood of immigrants.

 

Hanners: such a shame that Tyrone Mings was asked about the vile racism, rather than journos doing a puff piece on how cool international football can be if you just pretend the racism isn't happening. If everyone just ignores it, unless it's by muslims, then it's fine!! I wish I was in the gold lift too. 

If you only support freedom of speech for people who agree with you, you don’t support freedom of speech at all. 

It is precisely when you disagree with the views expressed, that you can show that you support free speech

I made a very clear distinction.  Also they weren’t speaking as such, they were making racially hateful gestures and noises.

Firstly, monkey chants aren’t covered under freedom of speech.

Maybe there could be something under article 10, hmm.  Nope.  No, sorry, even the EU stuff doesn’t extend legal protection for creative expression to be an horrendous fooking racist twot.

Gosh you are struggling. 

Do you really want to quibble that freedom of speech only applies to the Queen’s English and not to other forms of expression?

Try a different argument. 

Tbf I’m going to Stamford Bridge on Saturday, fully expect exposure to all sorts of free speech there.

re monkey chats being considered protected free speech, I don’t think they would pass the miller test which is enough of a bar for me to say they shouldn’t be protected.

I don’t know about the Miller test, but I disagree with the Hicklin test.  People upset by obscenity is a small price to pay compared to the fundamental importance of free speech. That case was clearly about confession within the Catholic Church, not obscenity.

Similarly, although I’m not in favour of gender neutral loos, if a female wants to wash her moo cup in the basin next to me, I’d accept her right to do so.

 

I am torn on this, obviously racist chanting completely unacceptable but I cant help thinking the neo fascists in the crowd will be pleased about all the media fuss - and was probably actually their goal.   I think (provided the players could stomach it and I accept this is a big if) would have been better to ignore and then come down like a tonne of bricks afterwards

 

Sanction should be all Bulgaria home games played behind closed doors until they can show they have talked the racism problem.

I'd say all competitive matches in a neutral country and behind closed doors (home fans only excluded) for 12 months, and all friendlies at home also with no home fans.  Next ban is 2 years, then 10.  It would end PDQ.  People talk about education being key - but these aunts know what they're doing, and don't care.  So you cannot fix them, but you can make them pariahs.  So do that.

I think the English team were amazing and have got a lot of respect for uniting/ retaining their dignity and Getting The Job Done.

Re the racist twunts - they didn't even wear balaclavas/ masks so are v easily identifiable on camera - cant they just be banned for life from stadiums??

Perhaps the worst thing is the manager refusing to acknowledge the chants in the first place - in complete denial that there's a prob, which hardly sends a great message to the non-twunts.

"come down like a ton of bricks"

Yeah - UEFA are famous for this.  I am guessing max EUR 20k fine for Bulge FA (probably less - seem to recall another former bloc country getting fined EUR 5000 when bananas were thrown a few years back) and maybe a one match behind closed doors ruling.

Re the racist twunts - they didn't even wear balaclavas/ masks so are v easily identifiable on camera - cant they just be banned for life from stadiums??

1. Not sure Bulgarian football is sophisticated enough to really enforce that

2. The ultras at European clubs often hold a lot of power, including but not limited to the sale of tickets for parts of the stadium. Clubs won't want to offend senior members of their groups as they can really cause problems. Means they can do what they want (see Lazio ultras for more details)

Bentner got fined a few years back for having advertising logos on the waist band of his boxer shorts.  £80k fine.  At that time, the fine was larger than all fines levied against national teams for racist chants combined. 

Ok Wellers, that's interesting. It would've been so different over here.

I cant see this changing though if the manager isn't prepared to take a stand and ask for it to stop.

Also, forgive my non-Bulgarian football expertise but - they said on the news this was anticipated - has there been a huge prob at previous England matches over there??

they said on the news this was anticipated - has there been a huge prob at previous England matches over there??

The reason that the stadium was half empty was because they'd been forced to close parts of it due to previous racist incidents (not necessarily against England)

Maid M - there is form for this all thru the former bloc (possible exception of Poland).  Also Italy and SPain in recent times.  And as the FA chairman pointed out - England has not sorted out its own house (see eg Chelsea but every club still has a problem).

When I worked in Prague I remember going out to the office terrace for a tab with a senior partner.  The office accounts manager was there too - a chap who I think was born in Nigeria.  When the latter finished his cig and left, the partner turned to me and did an impression of King Louis.  

 

fook right off with the ‘see chelsea’ crap, every club has ishoos just the media hates Chelsea so they tend to only highlight us.  It’s a success thing, the more you are successful the more the media detests you.  Hence why bottleham lolspurs never get highlighted.

Ah, ok, I didn't realise it had been so widely anticipated, thanks for the info. It's pretty shocking it's that widespread

Love the Rentaghost shout out btw - a classic

Isn't the Chelsea focus more than they've failed to do much about it rather than saying it's ONLY Chelski that has any ishoos?? Having lived near their ground for years though I can say objectively though that a lot of their fans are scum, sorry Chelski fans but it's trufax

Manchester United supporters have been involved in more football-related arrests where racism was an aggravating factor or a feature than any other club in England in the four seasons up to 2017/18, data from the Home Office shows.

Data released under a Freedom of Information request by the Press Association shows that 27 individuals recorded as United fans by police were arrested during the seasons 2014/15 to 2017/18.

Championship clubs Leeds United and Millwall each had 15 supporters arrested, while Leicester had 14 and Chelsea 13.

Although i guess if you went racists per head of supporter, Chelsea would be worse than Man Utd.

The main reason there aren't as many racism related arrests at Chelsea these days is because 85% of their crowd are day tripping tourists from Asia wearing full kit (inc socks) but who video the match on their ipads.

 

Chelsea rehabilitate offenders by taking them on trips to Auschwitz if they’ve been making anti-Semitic noises for example.  It’s more than many many clubs do.

Chelsea is the only club where I have seen a man standing next to a 7/8 year old (presumably his son or a nephew) shout "come on you lazy n----- bastard show some pride".   At his own player.

Who are UEFA's sponsors?  I seem to recall it's Amstel for the CL but that may be well out of date.  Presumably Amstel is owned by Heineken or Diageo or AnsBusch?

Last night was dreadful. However, the reporting of this does not seem to acknowledge that England fans, particularly those on away trips, are routinely disgustingly racist. Ten German Bombers is a popular number. There is more than a whiff of hypocrisy here.