Did anyone see Panorama the other night about racism in Ukraine and Poland ahead of the Euros.One complaint i'd have about football is the governing bodies have no clue how to run the game.It was a terrible decision to have the tournament in countries with such problems,so much so that not only fans are avoiding going but apparently the families of some of the English players.
Considering what I saw on the NZ news (which I think was taken from the Panorama thing), I wouldn't be surprised if some of the players decided not to go either!
I always thought UEFA was better than FIFA (ie not quite as corrupt and buyable) but obviously not, as it looks like the money has played a bigger role yet again at the cost of fan and player safety...
What I am dreading is the Championships turning into some kind of hooligans summit which could well happen if the authorities are not careful...
I saw some of that footage on our news, too, along with Sol Campbell saying something about people returning back home in coffins...
Now I haven't seen the whole Panorama, so I can't really be sure at how all of this was portrayed, how objective was it trying to be. But the way I see it, it seems to me that some people are exaggerating way too much. I mean, idiots are everywhere, and you could make a similar "documentary" just about anywhere in the world. You just gotta talk to the right people and go to the right places. Now I don't know how bad the situation is over there. It might well be worse than the rest of the world. But still, there are many non-white players playing for the clubs over there, and I don't seem to recall any incident before this right now. No cases where a player would want to leave the club and country for "feeling unsafe" (but as I said I haven't seen Panorama and I don't know if they maybe showed some examples of that happening).
Bottom line is, this being a European Championship, with better safety standards and greater exposure to the world, I seriously doubt any incident of note will happen. If anything should, I'm sure the authorities will be quick to deal with it
Well I will retract my previous statement slightly, because if all of that was translated correctly, the trouble is that authorities either don't want to see that there is a problem, or they simply think that it's "not a big deal" that these clubs (and we're actually talking about major clubs here) have nationalistic and racist groups "supporting" them. I mean you're still able to see stuff like this happening elsewhere, even in UK, but at least it's being dealt with.
On the other hand I still think there shouldn't be a problem in the matches during Euro, at least no more than in any other Euro or World Cup so far. I haven't really heard about any major trouble on Ukraine or Poland international matches, which should at least indicate that those groups keep their shit at the local level or that they're not allowed to go to those matches, unlike some countries, where these groups cause trouble on international level as well (e.g. Croatia, Serbia). Though of course, that still leaves the problem of such groups in the host cities. I mean I know they cause problems when it's their teams playing but you can see that they're totally batshit insane, wouldn't put anything past them...
One thing about the video though.. I can't shake the feeling that it's horribly biased. It focuses on the "ultras" groups, even says how "all" teams in Poland have such fan groups. Then they just say how they shouldn't host the Euro because of this. Like trying to say, "well this is what you'll get when you come here"
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
