By Mike Dickson
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CHELSEA FAN'S MONKEY TAUNT LATEST NEWS...
Now name him: Chelsea ask supporters to shop this fan for his 'monkey' taunt towards Welbeck as club AND police launch probe
For some of us the memory of standing up on terraces watching English football goes back longer than we would care to remember.
Not because it is now long enough ago to remind one of the onset of middle age, and certainly not because of the raw sense of energy once engendered by being part of a swirling mass of humanity all sharing the same passion.
Instead it is due to some of the other stuff that came with it, such as things like the rudimentary toilet habits and, we reflect again today, the vicious singling out of players purely because of their ethnicity.
It hardly needs saying that 'jokes' about jam jars (how some people laughed) and more straightforward racial abuse from 30 years ago should rightly be considered among sport's most unwanted museum pieces.
Unacceptable: A Chelsea fan appears to make a 'monkey' gesture toward Manchester United's Danny Welbeck
This was a particularly nasty part to the underbelly of the Seventies and Eighties, one that you would expect to have been consigned to history until you see images such as that of the Chelsea-supporting lout from Wednesday night making ape gestures at Manchester United's Danny Welbeck.
Right-thinking people everywhere, even those who behave in football grounds in a way they would rarely countenance in any other area of life, are entitled to ask: how on earth is this still going on as we approach the end of 2012?
Our small and crowded island can, for the most part, be proud of the way it has absorbed large numbers of incomers from far off lands of all colours and creeds and yet there are still a few who believe that walking through the turnstiles gives them license to behave abusively in a way that is now, thankfully, totally unacceptable.
Utlimately self-policing among fans is the best solution to eradicate it altogether. Yet for part of the explanation behind Wednesday night's events it is depressingly instructive to look closely at the picture taken from the opposite side of the pitch and the demeanour of the other spectators around the bearded offender.
Directly two rows back there is another man, his arm raised and wrist cocked in a position making a gesture in Welbeck's direction that will be unmistakeable to anyone who regularly watches football. In the heat of the moment he, too, clearly thinks it is acceptable to send a hateful signal, albeit one more commonplace and harmless.
Stars: Chelsea have many black players including Sturridge (left), Mikel (centre) and Moses
But back to the bearded man, who in this age of communication will be quickly identified and is already the subject of an official investigation by Chelsea.
After the police and the club have finished with him you would like to ask him a few questions. For instance, does he not in his daily life have friends or colleagues who are of a different race to him, and has their acquaintance not taught him that his behaviour is completely wrong?
And as a Chelsea fan, has he never thrilled to any of his team's black players over the years, for example the muscular industry of Jon Mikel Obi or the physical grace of Didier Drogba? What would they think of what he has done?
But then football is always a mass of contradictions, not least with the running of Chelsea itself. The angry, bearded man will doubtless get a life ban from Stamford Bridge and will quickly be forgotten, but it is tempting to think that he is an easy target for punishment.
Football clubs usually talk a good game when it comes to the whole issue of respect but, as we have seen with the John Terry and Luis Suarez affairs in all their tortuous tedium, they often send out mixed messages if it involves a valuable asset to on-field performance.
All this comes at a time when football's image has suffered badly in the wake of a glorious summer, with a glut of contrasts being drawn with the Olympics and the spirit that pervaded them and other sports.
Such comparisons are largely over-simplistic and fanciful, but there is no question that it sorely tests your love of the world's biggest game, even among those of us who developed it in the decades when football was about as fashionable as herpes. And every time you see images like Wednesday night's that love dies a little more.
Victim: Danny Welbeck was the subject of the apparent monkey gesture
Chelsea are serious challengers for the title of EPL's most dysfunctional club. Liverpool will need to keep Suarez fit and make sure Gerrard goes bar hopping in The Potteries to ensure they hold onto their title.
- Stretfordhead , Houston Texas., 01/11/2012 16:31
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