Adebayor shouldn't have to listen to these vile chants... so it's good he won't be at Euro 2012

13 April 2012

Adebayor, Adebayo-oo-or! Your dad washes elephants, your mum is a whore! Well, it's not the song you'd want played at your funeral, is it?

And indeed, it's not a song that its subject, Emmanuel Adebayor, much enjoys hearing while he plays football. But hear it he did this week, as Tottenham's fans wheeled out an old favourite to celebrate their reunion with the former Arsenal striker during their Champions League match against Real Madrid.

The big question: is it racist? Adebayor thinks so. Spurs and the Crown Prosecution Service think it's just a bit rude. UEFA haven't made their minds up.

Personally, I can vaguely see Adebayor's point. I think I'd be more offended by someone calling my mum a prozzy than my dad a pachyderm-scrubber. But then again, I'm not Togolese: I'm a sheep-shagging Welsh bastard.

We'd like to think that football isn't racist any more. And, indeed, since the bleak days of the 1980s, British football has changed. Don't believe me? Google a 1984 interview between Bob Wilson and 'John Barnes', as played by Michael Barrymore - blacked up, rattling off some excruciating "yeah mon" patois and singing No Woman No Cry while doing headstands.

But let's not kid ourselves. British football mirrors British society. As Lord Ouseley, chairman of Kick It Out, football's equality and inclusion campaign, says: "Racist abuse is not as prevalent as it has been in the past but there are unhealthy trends, such as immigrant hysteria, creeping back during these austere times."

So it seems. In the last month, we have seen confused allegations of racist abuse at West Ham's Upton Park. Rangers have been charged for their fans' sectarian chanting during a match with PSV. The Brazilian Neymar had a banana thrown at him [by a German student] during a friendly match against Scotland at Emirates Stadium.

Racial insults are still bound deep into the fabric of terrace culture, for obvious reason: the art of the football chant composer is to come up with ditties about opposition players that are as gratuitously offensive as possible. Take racism out of that and you're fighting with one hand behind your back.

The stands of every ground in the country are alive with a rich broth of allegations concerning the parentage, sexuality, dining habits and racial purity of the players on the pitch. The abuse ranges from the bizarre to the bigoted. Sometimes it is very funny. Sometimes it is unbelievably depressing. Racism is only one strand of it and very frequently it is bound up with loads more pointless hate and filth. Trying to identify the racist bits of football chants is like picking the peanuts out of poo.

Let's take Adebayor, again. What do you think is more offensive, the song about the elephant washing, or the one set to the same tune, which goes, "Adebayor, Adebayor, he used to like coach trips, but not any more!"

That's a reference to the Togo team's experience during the 2010 African Cup of Nations, when their team bus came under gun attack in Angola. The driver was killed and two players wounded. The song may not be racist, but it has the same loveable charm to it as the gas chamber hiss made towards Tottenham fans by (among others) Manchester City, West Ham and Chelsea fans. It has the same roguish wit and charm as the one that goes "Ashley's got Aids, Ashley's got Aids, he caught it from Drogba, Ashley's got Aids", or the one Spurs fans used to sing to Sol Campbell about him being Judas, hanging from the tree and getting HIV.

Still, at least football is moving forward into a more progressive . . . oh, no, hang on: it says here that Euro 2012 is in Poland and Ukraine! That's Poland and Ukraine, the breadbaskets of European racism and anti-Semitism.

A report from the East European Monitoring Centre tells us that the fans over there are into neo-Nazism, waving fascist symbols about, stabbing lefties and painting nice big banners saying things like "death to hook-noses" and "stop Islamicisation in Europe". And there's hardly a disincentive, is there? Uefa just issued Russia's Zenit St Petersburg a pathetic $10,000 fine because one of their fans handed Roberto Carlos a banana.

Lord Useley tells me that Kick it Out "would urge Adebayor not to be defeatist". I'd urge him to thank his lucky stars he's African. Euro 2012 is off his radar. God knows there'll be more than a bit of elephant-baiting to contend with next summer.

The way to mask Rooney's temper

There are plenty of ways to fall foul of petty tyrants in football these days but the above-mentioned Neymar has found a new one. He was sent off this week for celebrating a goal for his Brazilian club Santos by pulling on a paper mask of his own face. Upside down.

Perhaps, though, Wayne Rooney might bear it in mind. A paper mask of Mary Whitehouse next time he nets would show a newfound commitment to standards of public decency on the telly.

One down, two to go for super-fit Murray

I was sent the details of Andy Murray's fitness training regime this week and I almost gagged on my protein shake as I read it. The physical conditioning Murray undertakes is absolutely extraordinary. He will come to Queen's next month able to outlast any player on the circuit. That makes it even more pressing that Murray sorts out the mental and technical side of his coaching set-up. Otherwise he's letting all the hard work go to waste.

Carlo gives UEFA chance to shade FA

John Terry said he "would be banned" if he spoke his mind in the aftermath of Chelsea's 1-0 Champions League defeat by Manchester United. Carlo Ancelotti, meanwhile, inferred that referee Alberto Undiano Mallenco lacked "personality, courage and so on". Is Ancelotti not on dangerous territory? The FA banned Sir Alex Ferguson for a total of five games for saying something similarly innocuous. Will UEFA back them up and ban Carlo? Or do they have a bit more perspective?

Boxing must save DPW from himselves

The British boxer Danny Williams, supposedly retired, has in fact been fighting in Germany under the name DPW, with a Latvian identity and boxing licence. Someone in boxing needs to get a grip. It is scandalous that a fighter who can't get a licence in his own name and country is still competing in a sport where brain injury attends those who ignore medical advice. You don't wish a man's career over but you don't wish him dead, either.

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