Europe's great wall of denial on racism

NOTHING special happened. So said Michael Sanadze, CSKA Moscow's deputy media manager, this week.

Manchester City's Yaya Toure pointing towards as he remonstrates with referee Ovidiu Hategan at Arena Khimki stadium outside Moscow.

NOTHING special happened. So said Michael Sanadze, CSKA Moscow's deputy media manager, this week.

Nothing special. Just a regular night at the Khimki Arena. A "disapproving hum" and some "whistles to put pressure on rival players", but, as far as CSKA is concerned, no hint of the racial abuse alleged by Yaya Toure.

This is what happens. The wall of bigotry is replaced by a wall of silence or denial. Toure and Manchester City know the routine well by now.

They encountered something similar in February last year, when Toure and Mario Balotelli were subjected to monkey chants by Porto supporters during a Europa League match - only for Rui Cerqueira, the Portuguese club's communications director, to claim that the City delegation had merely misheard the home crowd chanting "Hulk, Hulk, Hulk" in support of their Brazil forward of the same name.

UEFA came down on Porto as only UEFA can. It was fined $US20,000. City, on the same day, was fined €30,000 for taking the field "up to 60 seconds late" for the second half of a match against Sporting Lisbon.

There was a sense of astonishment at Etihad Stadium, but even that meagre punishment for Porto felt like small vindication for City, which met the usual silence and denial until it discovered an incriminating YouTube video filmed by a Porto supporter.

This is what the anti-racism campaign, whether led by players, clubs or pressure groups, has been up against. For years, UEFA has spoken of "zero tolerance" of racism and discrimination, but has delivered zero action.

This head-in-the-sand approach - zero intolerance, you might call it - has blighted European football for years. Racist behaviour has continued to prevail in football stadiums across Europe, from Portugal in the west to the former Soviet Union in the east and various points between. It has to stop.

UEFA has pledged that this season it will be different. For a first offence, if found guilty, there will be a section of the stadium closed for the next European fixture. For a second offence, a full stadium closure. The crackdown extends to punishments for players and officials - a 10-match ban for those who are found guilty of racist conduct.

Already this season, three clubs - Dynamo Zagreb, Legia Warsaw and Honved - have been sanctioned with stadium closures for racist abuse by their supporters. Dynamo's Europa League match against PSV Eindhoven yesterday was played in an empty ground after UEFA found their supporters guilty of racist abuse in three separate matches this season.

Russia is one of those countries where it seems that the default reaction is to turn a blind eye - or a deaf ear. CSKA's reaction was to say that nothing happened and to imply that Toure had imagined it.

Even Seydo Doumbia, the CSKA forward, who plays alongside Toure for Ivory Coast, went along with that version of events, saying on the club's statement that his compatriot "got a little bit excited".

An editorial in Moskovsky Komsomolets, the Moscow-based daily newspaper, suggested that this was all a conspiracy by the British media, which, it said, "again started playing the old record when the 2018 World Cup was awarded to a country where racism flourishes".

Well it was - certainly in football grounds, where African players from Roberto Carlos to Peter Odemwingie have spoken for years about the abuse to which they have been subjected.

Resentment over 2018 should not come into it, but in Russia, as in Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Italy and elsewhere, there are persistent issues with racism in grounds.

THE TIMES