The beautiful game's ugly reality

It is a damp, cold November night in Klagenfurt, Austria.

The city's HYPO Group Arena is playing host to what appears on paper a rather uninteresting and insignificant friendly between Italy and Romania.

Mario Balotelli, Italy's emerging young striker, picks up the ball and is greeted by a chorus of boos.

"So what?" you might ask. Of course, this is commonplace at football matches when unpopular players take possession of the ball and all part of the fun and games between fans and players.

However, as the boos quickly descend into a series of monkey noises, it becomes apparent that racism has once again reared its ugly head.

Perhaps more alarmingly, if that is possible, is that the chants are coming from the corner of the stadium designated for Italian fans.

Unbelievably, a section of far-right Italian "ultras" are racially abusing their own player. They have already had a banner stating "No to a multi-cultural Italy" confiscated.

Unfortunately, this is not a rare event in Italian football, nor indeed in football worldwide. Despite numerous campaigns by various governing bodies, racism, as well as other forms of discrimination, is rife.

Having lived in Verona for a year, I can report several instances of racism at Lo Stadio Bentegodi at Hellas Verona games.

Whilst the abuse was not universal, there seemed to be no alarm among the tifosi and certainly no attempts to castigate those involved.

Verona themselves had several black players (a relatively new phenomenon for them, I must stress) yet that did not seem to deter them.

The "monkey chant" was not just reserved for black players either. Should the butei simply not like an opposing player or feel they lacked talent, they would happily brand them with the same iron in a sort of "we can't believe you're not black" manner.

Yet whilst all this goes on, the authorities are doing little of any effect to tackle the problem.

We live in an age where at most top grounds every seat is covered by CCTV and there are countless stewards patrolling the terraces, making it easy in theory to identify the perpetrators.

However, as demonstrated last year when Balotelli was once again victim to abuse from Juventus fans, the football associations deem it appropriate to punish innocent fans and the team by making them play behind closed doors.

Balotelli himself has come out in defence of the majority claiming it is unfair to punish everyone for the actions of a minority.

Why the footballing authorities cannot do more to tackle the individuals much like they have done with hooligans by imposing banning orders is a question I think needs to be addressed by Sepp Blatter and his cronies up at FIFA.

They should be applied with a zero tolerance policy to all that bring the game into disrepute for whatever reason, be it racism, violence, homophobia etc.

It would be quite simple to do, especially in countries such as Italy where everyone is required to show I.D to purchase tickets and enter the ground.

Unfortunately, when you have clowns like Croatian Football Federation President Vlatko Markovic producing comments like: "As long as I head the football federation, there will be no homosexuals playing in the national team," and "Luckily, only normal people play football," in reference to whether he has ever come across a homosexual player, the process seems to take a somewhat backwards step.

Surely there are powers also to remove idiots like this from the world of football and the influential positions they hold.

What is clear is that more must be done. The problem will not simply disappear.

No amount of initiatives will stop the hardcore minority at the centre of the abuse. They must be dealt with directly and with a heavy hand.

I for one would much prefer debate to surround this issue than one such as goal line technology, which, when you put the two next to each other, pales into insignificance.

Kick-Off

The ref has blown his whistle and we're off. Except in this game, anything goes.

Yes, I have entered the blogging world to air my views, give my take and vent my frustrations about the world of sport.

You may agree, you may disagree, I welcome discussion so feel free to comment. That isn't to say I will accept I'm wrong, I rarely do.

Due to my unhealthy obsession with sport, you'll find my rantings on a range of sports from all walks of life, so there should be something for everyone. Unless you don't like sport, in which case I suggest you leave now.
 
I am happy to accept any suggestions for a post so if you have something you want to see written about, let me know.

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Enjoy!