By now you’ve probably heard of another unfortunate and racially charged scandal in European soccer. This time it was Chelsea fans bragging about their being racist after a Champions League match against PSG in Paris. The fans were caught on videotape singing “we’re racist and that’s the way we like it” and shoving a black man off a metro train. The embarrassing incident is just another blight on archaic behavior from racist soccer fans from England to Italy to Russia and beyond. (While everyone has been focused on the 2022 Qatar World Cup, expect this to become a major, major storyline before the 2018 World Cup in Russia.)
And while police are investigating the situation, the metro debacle isn’t fading from the limelight. Over the weekend Chelsea drew at home 1-1 with lowly Burnley. Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho felt his team were hard done by with multiple refereeing decisions, including one penalty shout for striker Diego Costa. In his recap of the match, UK Guardian writer Paul Doyle wrote this, which has been dubbed “possibly the greatest paragraph of football journalism ever“:
Chelsea appealed in the 43rd minute when Costa collapsed in the box following contact from Jason Shackell. Mourinho, who claims his striker gets a raw deal from officials, threw his arms to the skies in supposed disbelief when the referee waved play on, but the decision seemed fair – Shackell’s hands did touch Costa but it was hardly the sort of shove that would, for example, prevent a commuter from boarding a train.
Check and mate.
