Eto'o's great belly
Fazeer Mohammed
Monday, April 17th 2006
Samuel Eto'o has real belly, boy.
The prolific striker won't be at the World Cup finals this year after Cameroon were eliminated in a heartbreaking finale to their qualifying campaign last October. Yet despite that crushing disappointment, he continues to get the better of some of the most accomplished defenders in the world, scoring 24 goals so far this season for runaway Spanish league leaders Barcelona.
But my admiration for him has more to with his intestinal fortitude in the face of almost constant racial abuse in the Primera Liga than his obvious skill at the very highest level. It is a triumph of his character to become one of the best strikers in the world in an environment where racist taunting by spectators - and even other players-is treated with nothing more than token resistance by administrators who proudly pat themselves on the back as guardians of the beautiful game.
Just consider what Eto'o and so many non-white players plying their trade throughout Europe have to endure.
In Spain, where a prominent coach was so comfortable in the country's festering environment of intolerance that he felt no remorse over his disparaging remarks towards a black opponent, it is almost a national pastime to spend an afternoon cheering for the home team and insulting players from Africa and the Middle East in the most vile terms possible.
Monkey chants, bananas being thrown onto the field and a host of verbal insults are all part of the fare in a land that delights in portraying itself as a bastion of Western enlightenment and civility. Most times, the victims of the abuse are consoled by the backing of their teammates and the belief that it is only a vocal minority who are stooping to the level of the gutter.
But every now and then, it becomes too much to bear.
Earlier this season, Eto'o could take it no more in a game at Real Zaragoza. The intensity and persistent nature of the tirade from thousands of animals in the stands was such that he wanted to leave the field there and then, only staying on and continuing with the game at the urging of teammates, officials and opponents. Only two weeks ago, in Barcelona's visit to Racing Santander, the treatment was the same.
And what has been the response from Primera Liga officials to all of this?
Zaragoza were fined the princely sum of US$10,890, while Santander's coffers were supposed to have been depleted by the sum of US$7,260. The combined totals of those fines would only amount to a fraction of a top footballer's weekly wages and, of course, this is all assuming that the penalties were actually enforced given that almost everyone has the right of appeal against any punishment.
So if the Spanish are happily treating this disgraceful practice with kid gloves, it is only reasonable to expect that the world body, FIFA, whose motto is "For the Good of the Game," are coming down on their affiliates like a ton of bricks.
Nothing of the sort. In fact, if a player ingests a banned substance, inadvertently or otherwise, he can be suspended from the game for more than a year. But if spectators at a particular venue become habitual in abusing players or other spectators on the basis of the colour of their skin, the worse that they can expect is a financial penalty that roughly amounts to the cost of the total amount of popcorn sold on a given afternoon.
The Spaniards can take consolation in the fact that they are not alone in Europe in effectively condoning racists in their terraces. For all of the superficial sloganeering about "Kicking Out Racism" and that sort of thing, bigotry remains alive and well in arenas from the westernmost tip of England to the easternmost point in Russia.
A story in yesterday's Express described the treatment meted out to a Brazilian player, Vava, by opposing players and supporters in Bulgaria.
In France, Holland, Germany and England-all countries at the vanguard of the sort of progressive thinking that we are told are characteristic of the developed world - football stadia are magnets for the scum of society while officialdom tries to pretend it isn't all that bad.
To be fair, from their point of view, it is really no big deal because the ones targeted for abuse and insults are just a bunch of minorities anyway. There is no need for any major upheaval because the game is still flourishing as a multi-billion-dollar business, so even FIFA, ensconced in their headquarters in sophisticated and cultured Zurich, hardly feel the game is threatened by a few "n" words and the occasional brawl.
So how do you get the football jefes to rake the clubs of offending supporters over the coals? That's a tough one, because unless the people of real power and influence are themselves the victims of such vitriol, then there is no real motivation to respond.
The most basic instinct in mankind is self-preservation, and until the power-brokers of football are made to feel the deep personal offence of racist abuse, they will continue to respond with a superficiality that amounts to nothing more than tacit approval of such reprehensible behaviour.
Either that, or Eto'o and others not just threatening to walk off the field, but really doing it on a stage where it will really make an impact, like the finals of the Champions League or World Cup.
