Racism in Italian football: a never-ending story

The plague of racism is afflicting Italian football and, more specifically, its top league: the Serie A. It would take more than this article to report all the racist episodes that happened during football matches since the creation of the league in 1898. Given the magnitude of the phenomenon, one would expect the Italian Footballing Association (IFA) to have implemented, throughout its 120 years of history, effective measures to stop racial abuse during football matches. The truth is that it has not, as recent episodes confirm.

During Serie A’s week 11, Hellas Verona was facing Brescia. At the 55th minute, Brescia striker Mario Balotelli decided to stop playing and kicked the ball into the stands, where some Hellas ‘supporters’ were taunting him with racist chants.

At the end of the match, Hellas Verona coach, Ivan Juric, denied that the team’s chants had been racist. He told Sky Sport that ‘’nothing happened; […] no racists chants, nothing at all". However, one of the many videos shot during the match clearly depicts some Hellas fans wailing at the Brescia player, mimicking the sound of a monkey.

What is shocking is that the Italian FA did absolutely nothing to identify the culprits of these disgusting chants. The only initiative came from the club itself, who decided to ban Luca Castellini from attending matches until 2030. Castellini, who is one of the most prominent leaders of Hellas’ supporters, declared in a radio interview after the match, that Balotelli could never be considered Italian, because of his Ghanaian descents and, therefore, his black skin. While surely the action taken by Hellas Verona is worth praising, IFA’s inaction is utterly ridiculous.

When asked about the incident, Hellas Verona president claimed that there were no chants directed against the Brescia player. Moreover, the president contended that “it is wrong to generalise and speak for all 20,000 fans when a couple of people have said something.” Such words highlight what is possibly the most pernicious characteristic of the Italian football system and, one could argue, of Italy in general: its tendency to find scapegoats.

Attempts to find scapegoats and blame racist chants on a few individuals who ruin the game for everyone else is a response that both the IFA and Italian football clubs have in common. Rather than mutually collaborating with authorities to identify the few racist supporters, most presidents, as the Verona case demonstrates, refuse to admit that racist chants could be heard in the first instance, thus turning a blind eye to the problem. Lazio president stretches this attitude even further, claiming that monkey sounds are not always racists, since they can also target players with “normal skin”. The problem is that the president did not see any issues with this reasoning at all! This reflects the main issue with racism in Italian football and, more in general, in the country: people in the stands and in the media, as well as football fans, do not understand what racism is.

For instance, Lucio Passirani, an Italian TV opinionist, claimed, while being filmed on live stream that the only way to stop Serie A’s Belgian-Congolese player Romelu Lukaku from scoring, was to throw him bananas. The journalist successively apologised and claimed that what he said was ‘just’ a pundit. Similarly, one of the most popular Italian sport newspapers, ‘Corriere dello Sport’, published an edition titling “Black Friday” previewing Serie A’s game Inter vs Roma. Under the headline, the newspaper showed two black football players, namely Inter player Romelu Lukaku and Roma player Chris Smalling. The headline was heavily criticised, especially by foreign press but the newspaper’s editor claimed that the title’s intentions were innocent.

These instances seem to confirm that Italians do not understand what racism is and often confuse it with goliardic banters and pundits. Italian sports journalists, as well as fans and football clubs presidents, do not realize that associating a human being to a monkey is racist. It is precisely on this that the IFA should work on: educate the public about racism and its moral unacceptability. Additionally, the IFA should abandon its aforementioned scapegoatism attitude and start taking responsibility for racist episodes. Measures such as substantial club fines and lifetime stadium bans for racist supporters are already in place, but have seldom been used by the IFA.

Paradoxically, during December, the IFA announced and showed the new symbol of its new anti-racism campaign: three differently coloured monkeys’ portraits. Given that the monkey has been at the heart of almost every racist incident in Italian football, the campaign shows the complete IFA’s lack of sensibility towards the issue. Moreover, the message of the painting, per its author, is that we are all monkeys. On the other hand, the correct message for an anti-racism campaign should entail that nobody is a monkey! Thus, again, the IFA has scored a resounding ‘own goal’.

Umberto Tabalappi