Just as at the last World Cup, we had the spectacle, with all its irony, of teams in the European Championships' latter stages lining up to endorse the campaign to `Kick Out Racism', with the relevant captains mouthing their dedication to an undoubtedly worthy cause, writes Brian Glanville.
Compare and contrast the vastly different experiences of Andrei Arshavin and Colin Kazim Richards in the recent European Championships. Till the semifinals of the tournament, you would think there was a vast gap between them. Arshavin, suspended from his Russian team's first two games, having rashly kicked an opponent playing against tiny Andorra, showed in the meantime what a tremendous talent he is by cutting the Rangers' defence to pieces in Manchester where his team Zenit easily won the Final of the UEFA Cup. When he was able to take his place in Russia's side against Sweden Sweden in the Euros, he proceeded to do much the same to the Swedish defence. And even, in the next match, in extra-time, to Holland who simply could not contain him. He scored himself, cutting in from the right past a hapless defence, having already cut in just as irresistibly and elusively from the left to create the first Russian goal.
It seemed logical to assume that he would do much the same in the ensuing match to a Spanish defence which had hardly looked the equal of its team's attack. But it simply didn't happen. Arshavin, who had expressed a desire to play for Barcelona and was also reportedly pursued by Chelsea, simply faded into anonymity. Far from running the show, he seemed almost traumatised by the occasion; you had to look long and carefully to find him at all.
What went wrong? It was surely a psychological problem rather than anything to do with his physical condition. As they say in sport, he choked. And you began to wonder why it was that so manifestly gifted a footballer should wait till the age of 27, despite his "baby face," to break through. True, Spain had the doughty Senna playing defensively in central midfield, but Senna didn't close near him, never followed his every step. It was a huge disappointment for the player himself, for Russia, and those of us who had been admiring him.
No one, by contrast, expected a lot from Kazim Richards, who would probably not have been playing for Turkey in the semifinals at all had the team not been beset by injuries and suspensions. His record was hardly an exceptional one. Born in East London to an English father and a Turkish Cypriot mother, he, as a right-winger, had somehow found his way North to Bury, went from there to another modest club on the South Coast in Brighton, then took a step upwards when he went to Sheffield United in the so-called Championship, alias Division 2.
Things looked up further still when the leading Istanbul club brought him to Turkey, where he did well enough at Fenerbahce to be picked for Turkey's European squad. Still apparently speaking no Turkish. But when it came to the match against Germany, he was simply inspired.
Fast, incisive, adroit, a great deal too much for the once acclaimed Germany left-back Philipp Lahm whom he rounded with ease. Twice Kazim shot against the German crossbar; the second occasion produced a goal.
But Lahm, after a dreadful time of it in defence, largely redeemed himself late in the game when he overlapped down the left and scored right-footed. Kazim afterwards protested that Lahm should never have had the opportunity since he at that point was lying injured on the ground and so unable to pursue and challenge Lahm. The Germans, he insisted, should have put the ball out. Morally, perhaps they should, but legally there was no obligation to do so. This has long been a grey area, since though it has long been the fashion for teams chivalrously to put the ball out on such occasions, they are certainly not obliged to do so under the laws of the game. Indeed, not long ago there was surely a FIFA directive which discouraged the practice.
Perhaps after the final, in which Lahm was so utterly taken to the cleaners when Fernando Torres scored the only goal for Spain, the German left-back might have wished the game had indeed been held up, with Kazim grounded. Meanwhile, you might say that an international star was born.
Just as at the last world cup, we had the spectacle, with all its irony, of teams in the tournament's latter stages lining up to endorse the campaign to `Kick Out Racism', with, on this occasion, the relevant captains mouthing their dedication to an undoubtedly worthy cause. Yet how to discount and dismiss the great black shadow which has hung over the triumphant Spanish manager, Luis Aragones, ever since he outrageously told his young winger Jose Antonio Reyes, alluding to Thierry Henry, not to take any notice of "that black s----." He was fined a modest couple of thousand pounds by the Spanish Federation, but when he appealed in court, the fine was inexplicably set aside.
Not long after that the notorious Ultras Sur fans behind the goal at Bernabeu Stadium viciously abused two black members of the England team.
This time it was the Spanish Federation which had to pay a somewhat heftier fine, but surely the correct response was to bar the Bernabeu from staging internationals.
At the 2006 World Cup, it was the Ukraine manager and former star, Oleg Blokhin, who stood beside his team when the `Kick Out Racism' campaign was endorsed on the field. That same Blokhin who, only months earlier, had made a scandalous public attack on black players who, he averred, were running Ukrainian soccer.
At the recent European Championships, the Croatian Federation was duly fined, again quite heavily, after their supporters had racially abused Turkish players. It is alas all too common for black players who appear in some Balkan countries to be gratuitously insulted.
And Dick Advocaat, manager of Zenit St. Petersburg, recently admitted that he dared not sign black players, such was the racial bigotry among the club's supporters.
It is high time that rather than impose mere fines, UEFA and FIFA expelled clubs and countries and shut down stadia.
Wretched news meanwhile, that, after a misbegotten suggestion by the Chairman of the Scottish FA Gordon Smith - the man who missed that late FA Cup Final sitter which would have allowed underdogs Brighton to beat mighty Manchester United - all the UEFA countries have noted to increase the number of finalists from 2016.
And this was the competition whose semifinals and final rounds were contested by just four teams. So an extra burden is placed on leading players and the quality of the finalists, just as in the bloated World Cup, will be diluted.
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