Yet another Europa tie is dominated by off-field events reason

 
Tom Collomosse15 March 2013

It started midway through the first half. With his back to goal, Emmanuel Adebayor tried to hook a shot into the Inter net but his effort flew over the bar.

Within the chorus of derision from the home support, it was easy to hear the monkey chants. These became even clearer in first-half stoppage time, when Adebayor missed a good chance to equalise for Tottenham.

A fan behind one of the goals was holding what looked like an inflatable banana. In the second half, the abuse grew worse. Not only was Adebayor a continued target, Kyle Naughton and Mousa Dembele also seemed to have racist abuse directed towards them.

Adebayor responded in the best possible manner, scoring the goal that eventually put his team into the draw for today’s last eight. But the forward looked glum as he walked through the post-match mixed zone, declining all requests for interviews from journalists and broadcasters. Dembele, Jermain Defoe and Brad Friedel all agreed to speak and they were united by their displeasure.

There is no doubt that racism presents a significant problem to the Italian football authorities. Lazio were forced by UEFA to play two Europa League matches behind closed doors after repeated offences, including in the two matches against Spurs during the group phase.

Inter were recently fined a total of £55,900 for two racist offences from their supporters, including abuse of AC Milan players Mario Balotelli and Sulley Muntari during last month’s derby.

Yet again this season a European match involving Spurs has been overshadowed by off-field events. There were the attacks on their fans in Rome and Lyon, there was racist abuse in both games against Lazio and then again last night in San Siro.

We all hope that the quarter-final will be different.

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