Now on the news of late there's been a lot of coverage about the racist abuse Sol Campell got from the Spurs fans in the game against Pompey. There's always a huge outcry when black players get racially abused when playing in a foreign country, so why should it be different in the UK? It shouldn't. Imo football chanting has gone too far - way too far over recent years. There's football banter, but then there's just plain d!*kh**d style chants. I don't find it clever, and in some cases I find it offensive. Now i'll admit to have going a bit too far in footballing banter before, but in that case the player deserved it.

 

Anyway, there's a fantastic article Oliver Kay wrote about the whole issue, although its main focus is on Liverpool, Everton and Man Utd. Some of the stuff that is said in this article is quite disturbing...

 

It seems like I opened a can of words with a piece yesterday about certain things that were chanted at the Merseyside derby at Goodison Park. Some have accused me of failing to understand the context in which “2-0 to the Murderers” was sung by a number of Liverpool supporters, so here goes...

 

Sorry to disappoint you, but I do fully understand the context. I’m not exactly a novice when it comes to Merseyside football. But, from where I’m sitting, that context – Everton and Manchester United supporters gleefully chanting “murderers” for years without, it seems, the slightest clue about what happened at Heysel in 1985 – does not excuse what was sung. It doesn’t make the chant funny, clever or brilliant, as some seem to think. The chant sucks, as do the ones that provoked it in the first place.

 

Some considered it genius because it silenced the Everton taunts (“You should have seen their faces …”) and because it meant that Liverpool fans have “reclaimed” – or at least taken ownership of – the “murderers” tag, much like the gay community has with the word “queer” or the black community has with the word “n*****”. Some have likened it to Tottenham's "yid" chants or Robbie Fowler’s “reclaiming” of the drug-abuse rumours back in 1999 with his infamous cocaine-snorting celebration. I take the point. I just don’t agree with it.

 

The difference here is that we are talking about a disaster in which 39 people died. And yes I know it was a disaster that could have unfolded at just about any European match involving just about any English club over a period from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s and that it took a particular set of circumstances – not least inadequate security arrangements and a crumbling abomination of a stadium, which Uefa should never forgive themselves for selecting – for it to happen when it did. Believe me, I know all that and I have frequently found myself trying to explain these things to people who think they know better.

 

I also know that a disturbing large proportion of Everton and United supporters take undue pleasure in singing about Heysel in order to score points. I just did not really think that Liverpool fans, of all fans, would try to score points by turning the tables and singing it back in a way that made a joke (whether you like it or not) of a disaster that claimed the lives of 39 innocent football supporters.

 

Someone called my reaction “fake moral outrage”. There’s nothing fake about it and I wasn’t outraged, just surprised and, yes, disappointed. I could have chosen to ignore the atmosphere on Saturday and particularly the "2-0 to the Murderers" chant, but I felt and still feel very strongly about it - just as I do the United fans whom I have condemned in the past for chanting despicable things about Hillsborough and for making light of their own disaster in the interests of point-scoring. I have often wondered what Sir Bobby Charlton thinks when he hears United fans at Anfield asking “Where’s your famous Munich song?”

 

It just comes down to what you find acceptable. I don’t find the "murderers” chant acceptable. I don’t find “Without killing anyone, we’ve won it three times” acceptable (and that, unlikely as it may sound, was actually sung by the United players on the pitch at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow in May). I don’t find “Where’s your famous Munich song?” acceptable. I don’t find “2-0 to the Murderers” acceptable. I don’t find chants about Michael Shields or Harold Shipman acceptable. I find the chants about Steven Gerrard’s family utterly despicable, as I do the Evertonian “joke” of covering your face with your hand as if to signify someone being crushed at Hillsborough. I actually feel sickened as I write this.

 

Maybe all of this makes me someone who has spent so long in the press box that he has lost touch with the tribal nature of football’s rivalries. Maybe, but I don’t think so. Maybe it is also possible to get so wound up in that tribal warfare that you lose sight of where the boundaries of taste lie. Some will not care, but, for me, the “2-0 to the Murderers chant” was a long way over that boundary. I know full well what the explanation is. I just don’t think that it constitutes any kind of excuse.

Source: Oliver Kay @ The Times

 

Thoughts?

I think it is about time the Police, authorities & the FA charged the clubs for their fans despicable chants to do something about it.

 

Indeed, the Shadow Sports Minister has brought the spector up on this subject & making this a Law should the Conservatives win the next election.

 

It really annoys me when the English media/pundits gets high & mighty about "Johnny Foreigner" from the Iberian peninsula or Eastern Europe make crude monkey chants towards Afro-Caribbean players representing England when they seem to turn a blind eye (ear?) to far more offensive racist, homophobic & libellous chants which if repeated in a newspaper as a statement would see the paper taken to the cleaners in court.

Fantastic article and a great read, something i completley agree with.

 

When i had my season ticket in the Stretford end tbh many of the chants disgusted me. There was this guy who used to sit in front of me and he got SO EXCITED when we were beating Liverpool, he really REALLY hated them... now i can accept this but when Rio scored his 1-0 last minute winner for him to turn round and scream f*** THE MURDERING bast*rdS is a bit far tbh... i think it is despicable that people can take the mick out of Hillsbrough, Munich or any other disaster but that's just how some people are afraid. The exact same thing on the "murderers" chants can be said about City fans on Munich, with the "how many died on the runway" chant i've heard oh so many times. There is just no need for any of it, no need to make a joke or fun our of innocent people dieing and i will never excuse this sort of behaviour. Even when i see people on this forum (no names being named Kyle) making jokes of this nature it really does disgust me :(

Edited October 2, 200816 yr by James.