ROME — Italians reacted forcefully Friday to a racist incident that led players with the powerful A.C. Milan club to abandon a soccer match this week, taking a strong stand in a country where racist episodes in sporting events are generally underplayed.
A prosecutor in Busto Arsizio, the Lombard town where the episode took place, said Friday that he would open a criminal investigation into charges of instigation to racial hatred, and the town’s mayor said he would sue the culprits, once they were identified. The head of the Italian Bishops’ Conference decried racism in soccer, and the owner of A.C. Milan, the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, said his team would walk off the field in any future game, including international matches, blighted by racist chanting.
“These uncivil episodes, these catcalls and defamatory chants now occur with excessive frequency and offend soccer and all of sports,” Mr. Berlusconi said Friday.
An exhibition match between A. C. Milan and Pro Patria, a lower division club, was abruptly abandoned on Thursday after Kevin-Prince Boateng, a Ghanaian-German midfielder, responded to racist chants by kicking a ball into the stands where some Pro Patria supporters were howling like monkeys and then walked off the field, followed by his teammates.
“Shame that these things still happen,” Mr. Boateng wrote on Twitter after the game.
Three other Milan players, Urby Emanuelson, Sulley Muntari and M’Baye Niang, were also harassed with chants.
It was the first time that a soccer team had halted a game because of racism, a gesture that sent a strong signal that could have wide repercussions, some hoped. Typically, referees will temporarily stop games marred by racist chants to allow clubs and players to get rowdy fans under control.
“It was a courageous gesture,” on the part of players, “a small episode with an enormous value,” said Andrea Monti, editor in chief of Gazzetta dello Sport, the sports daily that on Friday dedicated six pages of interviews and commentary to the episode. Some commentators wondered whether the team would have left the field had it been a league game or part of an international championship.
“Certainly the fact that it was an exhibition game made it easier,” Mr. Monti said, “but the fact is that it happened and it is time that it did.”
Racism among soccer fans and players is hardly a new phenomenon, especially in Europe. The problem is acute in the East, in Russia, Ukraine and the Balkans, but it is a continuing issue in Britain and France, too. Fans try to upset opposing players, often African in origin, with racist chants, and some prominent players have also been accused of racism, making comments and gestures in the heat of a match.
“I don’t see this as only Eastern European, except by shade or degree. It’s ubiquitous in Europe,” said Andrei Markovits, a professor of German studies at the University of Michigan. “Somehow the soccer stadium has remained the last bastion of unmitigated maleness. You can behave badly and be proud of it, the way you can’t in virtually any other venue in Europe.”
In November, the police investigated a “monkey gesture” made by a Chelsea fan aimed at a Manchester United player, Danny Welbeck. A Liverpool fan was banned for four years after being found guilty of racial taunting against another Manchester United player, Patrice Evra. German fans have made Nazi salutes.
The former England captain John Terry was cleared by a court in July of charges of racist taunting, but was nevertheless banned for four matches and fined $350,000 after being found guilty of racially abusing a player for the Queen’s Park Rangers.
The various organizations governing soccer have blown hot and cold on the issue, condemning racism but also threatening to sanction players who interrupt or abandon matches because of racial taunting.
So far this season there have been 25 racist episodes in Italian soccer, said Mauro Valeri, a sociologist and an expert in racism in soccer, a frequency on par with last year, when fines totaling more than $685,000 were issued, he added. Italian news reports said that Pro Patria had been fined about $20,000 for racist chants over the past year.
Soccer authorities do not do enough to educate fans and soccer clubs about racism, Mr. Valeri said, and racist episodes often go unrecognized, even by the sporting press. “Boateng was jeered during an A. C. Milan-Internazionale derby in October, and no one said anything,” he said. “So it’s important that awareness about the problem remains high, but to be honest, I have my doubts that it will.”
Italian news media reported Friday that several Pro Patria fans involved in the racist chanting had been identified through video feeds of the game. Mr. Valeri said that singling out the culprits, instead of fining the clubs, as was done in the past, would send a strong message.
Mr. Boateng also called on the authorities to prosecute racists. “I am sad and angry about the fact that I have to be the one who takes this step,” he told CNN in an interview on Friday. “Like I have to be the one who walks off the field, when there are so many people like FIFA or whatever — they can do something against it, so they should wake up and do it. They should not tolerate it. If there is a little thing of racism, they should be out, they should be banned forever from the stadium.”
ny times
