I was just watching a news report on the BBC that showed many Spanish fans shouting racist insults at the black players from the British football team at a recent game in Spain. Can somebody please explain why the Spanish people find that it is acceptable to do that. While many Spanish people like to think that they are much more cultured than Americans, I can't imagine something like the football incident that happened in Spain happening in America. Even from reading the posts on this message board, I get the feeling that Spanish people are very bigoted. I am just having a hard time understanding how so many fans can think that it is okay to taunt somebody just because they are black. This incident and the many racist posts on this board have really has changed my opinion of Spanish people.

Well, in yesterday's match, IMO, once the English team saw they were behind because their play was worse, they decided to win trhough force. The spctacle they gave kicking and bumping into the spanish player was lamentable and really dangerous for those stars.

If in a game that is purely for training (no clasification effects, called "friendly game") and it's by the national teams (pay very little compared to clubs) you can be injured and be out for a year or more because they break your knee or the like, how can you expect players to play at ease? They get shy, because they are not going to risk their careers for a match with the national selection, in a so called "friendly".

When people see this bad behaviour, they get furious and, since we're here freer of PC, thanks God, they call the whatever may be more irking for them. Be it black, or gay, or fat, or f*cking bald, or traitor, or whatever.

Furious people behave like this in most places, which includes Britain, and I would be much more worried about the causes of this fury, that is, the extreme violence in play that causes it.

Ignacio, how can you condone the monkey noises and racial abuse poured upon the black players by not just a few idiots and bigots in that crowd?? It was disgraceful and I thought I had gone back in time to the seventies when this sort of thing was prevalent.

The English team were terrible. They were as poor as any English team I have seen. They were aggressive and hard and a couple of challenges were dreadful. Rooney the Looney was taken off before he hurt somebody. However the Spanish team were making a meal of some of it and playacting trying to con the referee and all credit to him he saw through a lot of it.

However, there is no excuse for the racial abuse. A disgrace. You can see what neutrals think in Azmeet's comments, although for goodness sake Azmeet, please don't generalise like that. All Spanish people are not xenophobic or rascist.

Ignacio, don't blame violent play for the consistent rascist taunting FROM THE FIRST WHISTLE last night and during the under 21 game the night before. The main cause is that clown of a manager Aragones and if he isn't sacked by the Spanish FA ahead of the disciplinary action which will surely follow from FIFA, then the Committee in charge of your national team are as guilty as that rascist bastard!

Excuse my language, but you are so off the mark I am tempted to believe you have said these things purely to wind everyone up on here. I hope not.

As for Aragonés, I agree.

As for the yellings from the first whistle, I couldn't tell. I heard there were, but I hadn't heard that they were previous to the violence. I saw the match in TV, and they became only notorious after that black guy began reaping legs.

And as for the racial insults, I won't or wouldn't condone them if they were meant by racial motivations but, as I said before, if teh player guy had a small moustache maybe he could have been called Hitler or Franco, and had he had big feet he would have been called Bigfoot or Yeti.

What I mean is that I believe that it's not really a racial issue, that those people didn't really care wether he was black or not and that they started the racial name calling to express their disgust (or,as you say to support Aragonés. That sounds even more probable) and that they could have been making name-calling on anything else, as you and I very well know happens in many, many football games.

I do not condone the racial insults, which I consider awful to say the least, just point out that massive public insult is often heard and that racial was just accidental be it to support Aragonés or to complain of violence. Therefore, it's not a proof of the spanish being racists.

My God! How shocking! I'm now looking for news on it and found them everywhere, including the BBC.co.uk page HERE :

Thursday, 18 November, 2004, 08:01 GMT
Spanish FA awaits racism inquiry

Fifa and Uefa are set to launch an inquiry into the Spanish FA after black England players were subjected to racist abuse in Wednesday's friendly.

Shaun Wright-Phillips and Ashley Cole had to endure monkey chants in the ill- tempered clash in Madrid.

Sports minister Richard Caborn said: "I will write to my Spanish counterpart to express my outrage. I would like the Spanish FA to condemn the scenes.

"I also expect Fifa and Uefa to fully investigate the issue."

Caborn added: "There is no place for racism in football or modern society, and I strongly believe that action needs to be taken at the highest level."

England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson said: "It's very bad to hear when people boo players because of the colour of their skin.

"At Lazio four years ago we had some fans who did the same. When things like this happen, then something must be done."

Piara Powar, spokesman for British football's anti-racist organisation Kick It Out, said: "Uefa needs to threaten the Spanish with closure of stadia, with a ban."

Gordon Taylor, the head of the players union, says England's players should have been told to make a stance by walking off during the game.

"The message should have come down from the FA directors, to say we will take responsibility for this and take them off," the Professional Footballers Association chief executive said.

The Football Association had already complained to Uefa after several England U-21 players were targeted in their game on Tuesday and it will now be highlighting the incidents during the senior game.

Captain David Beckham, who plays at the Bernabeu for Real Madrid, admitted the chanting had surprised him.

"Playing here and living here, I've never heard anything towards racism at all," said Beckham.

"I was surprised but it's something the FA and world football are trying to cut out and they are working very hard."

The actions of the Spanish fans follow the controversy surrounding Spain coach Luis Aragones.

He allegedly made racist remarks in October about Thierry Henry ahead of Spain's game with France.

Aragones claimed he was trying to motivate Henry's Arsenal team-mate Jose Reyes in training.

He has not made a personal apology to Henry, and refused to comment on Wednesday's incidents.

I think this supports what I said:

And this, the Anchovy's (and mine now) believed causes for this, showing support for this most popular trainer, in a wrong way.

Ignacio, to suggest that the spanish crowd making monkey noises at the black players was something to do with how the game had been played is utter rubbish. As has already been mentioned this started at the first whistle. I could have understood irate shouting at Rooney as he was out of control and needed to be taken off because of it.

The fact that that the monkey noises happened at the U21 game the previous night seems to point to it being an inherrant problem.

The fact is that in a lot of countries in western Europe if the national manager made a comment about Thierry Henry such as Aragonés made they would have been sacked on the spot. If the spanish FA continue to turn a blind eye to such incidents then the problem is never going to go away. I hope FIFA do something worthwhile this time and maybe these idiots might get the message that it is not acceptable. The same situation was stamped out in the UK by having strict rules about such fans being banned from matches etc. I hope the same thing can happen in Spain as I don't like to see Spain have it's name dragged through the mud because of some moronic bigots.

It's one of those things you have to come down very, very hard on whatever the apparent "motivation" for the behaviour (no excuses). A strong message should be sent that this behaviour will not be tolerated by the team, it's representatives, and the majority of Spanish football fans. Racism exists everywhere. It must be vigorously challenged.

I know that certain Spanish clubs attract a neo-nazi rightwing element and I reckon it was probably a number of them who were doing this chanting. To suggest that the chanting was provoked by what had been said about the trainer/manager is disingenuous to say the least. Black player kicks the ball - monkey chanting: white player kicks the ball - no monkey chanting: black player kicks the ball again - monkey chanting...isn't that clear enough?

Ok, as I said before, I heard those chants only after the violence by that black guy, and from that point of view it's perfectly understandable that people were irked with him and called names to him, and not to others, white or not .

However in my previous posts in this very thread I learned from Anchovy that they were previous to the game itself.

Being it this way, I, too coinicided previously, that it probably was to show an erroneous form of support to Luis Aragonés, a coach I don't like at all either.

-I agree the chants were offensive and shouldn't have been made.

-I think this says nothing on how much spaniards are racists or no, because of the above said.

-There is not much the FIFA can do, because Clubs or National Federations cannot prevent what people is going to chant.

-There have always been insults in football, in Spain, and much more in England, who have been banned several times from European competition, not because of insulting but because of hooligans' violence, so this is no reason to make a fuss. Besides, in England (and elsewhere) some people have also made racist chants.

-There are no clubs with substancial neo-nazi attitude, but there are some clubs with tiny but noisy neo-nazi groups, like Atlético de Madrid (BTW Aragonés loved Club), that could the drag public, in situations like Aragonés'.

-I bet they won't do it against other teams who are not English. perhaps they did it because of the English press treatment of Aragonés comments some months before.