Incidents at Hearts and Chelsea matches reveal scale of football's racism problem

Raheem Sterling was not shocked by the racial abuse directed towards him. Picture: PA

This in itself ought to snap football’s white, liberal masses out of any complacency. For us well-meaning white folk, racism is entirely an abstract problem. For our ethnic brothers and sisters it is something felt deep in the bones. It hurts as well as offends. So, justifiably, the Sterling fall-out focuses on the racist nature of the episode. Football must redouble its efforts to stamp racism out.  Only last week Arsenal’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang had a banana thrown at him during the north London derby and on Saturday two fans were arrested at Hearts following the racist abuse of Motherwell’s Christian Mbulu.

While racism provides the context in all three cases it does not exhaust the charge sheet in a football environment where inveterate hatred and hostility still passes for support. We are kidding ourselves if we believe football has left the dark days behind. Had the cameras panned around the ground at Stamford Bridge on Saturday they would have readily alighted on faces ravaged by anger, snarling, distorted features spewing bile like Bill Sikes’ dog in the direction of opposing players and officials.

This is a common feature at grounds around the country. Tribalism is a part of the game and passionate expression an essential element of the watching experience. We shout and bawl because we care about our teams and about outcomes. If we didn’t, stadiums would be empty places. The well-adjusted in the crowd are contained by the accepted norms that distinguish right from wrong. Others pay no heed to the checks and balances that govern decent behaviour.

The abuse of Sterling has its roots in complex social ills and a hooligan tendency that continues to fester in the margins. In football’s tribal milieux, Sterling became an easy figure to hate.

His transfer from Liverpool to Manchester City was seen as the move of a grasping, disloyal opportunist, a player who had no respect for, or loyalty to, the club that nourished him, washing his hands of them for the arrivistes’ coin.

This is further complicated by the undeniable thread of racism running through the Sterling narrative. Sterling rightly chose to frame the problem politically, pointing to the difference in the presentation by one media outlet of how two young players, Phil Foden (white) and Tosin Adarabioyo (black), spent the mad riches available to them on houses for their mothers.

It was, on the one hand, “Manchester City starlet Phil Foden buys new £2m home for his mum” as opposed, on the other, to “Young Manchester City footballer, 20, on £25,000 a week, splashes out on mansion on market for £2.25m despite having never started a Premier League match”.

The portrayal is positive in one headline and pejorative in the other. This kind of messaging does not require the author to be racist, just unthinking.

The outcome is the casual reinforcing of negative stereotypes which, in the worst hands, leads to the kind of garbage inflicted on Sterling at Stamford Bridge.

The game has come a long way in improving the working environment for black players and managers, first acknowledging and then regulating racism out of the workplace.

Now they must tackle more effectively the social contract with supporters. And that means zero tolerance of abuse in all its forms.