I liked Prague a lot when I visited there in 2003, and considering that it is easily the most international city in Central or Eastern Europe, you'd expect better than the "racist 'monkey' chants" that arose in the Sparta (Prague) Champions League football (read: soccer) match against Amsterdam's Ajax on "three occasions when Ajax forward Ryan Babel was in possession of the ball."
UEFA is trying to police this idiocy -- it has forced Sparta to shut about 50 rows of seats in the two sections where the chants came from for its next Champions League home match.
Similar nastiness occurred in Bulgaria when defending champ Liverpool played CSKA Sofia and at Bucharest when Romanian champion Steaua played Ireland's Shelbourne FC. UEFA is investigating the former, and has forced Steaua to play 250 miles from Bucharest in response to the latter incident.
And this racist behavior isn't confined to Eastern European fans, as we noted last year.
No comments:
Post a Comment