BERLIN - Claims of racist abuse targeting players at the World Cup emerged
hours after FIFA and local organizers promoted the "Say No to Racism" campaign
on Wednesday.
France coach Raymond Domenech said black players were taunted as they entered
the stadium before their second-round match against Spain at Hanover the
previous night.
"When the bus arrives at the stadium, when you hear some fans making monkey
chants ... I just turned my head away," Domenech said in Hameln. "I don't even
give them the satisfaction of a look."
He declined to say more. Spanish fans whistled and booed during the French
national anthem, the "Marseillaise," and several Les Bleus players said that
gave them extra incentive to win.
France won 3-1 and plays Brazil in the quarterfinals.
Many reports before the France-Spain match focused on a controversy in 2004,
when Spain coach Luis Aragones made a racist remark about France striker Thierry
Henry during a training session. He was fined $3,760 by Spain's soccer
federation, which many felt was too lenient.
He later apologized, denying he was a racist.
Before the World Cup started, the FIFA Congress voted to give the sport's
governing body the regulatory power to combat racism by fining, sanctioning or ¡ª
in extreme cases ¡ª banning teams from national or international competition.
That made clubs and national associations responsible for the actions of their
players and fans.
"The first responsibilities lie with the national associations and if they
are not doing what is expected of them then FIFA's executive committee must
intervene," FIFA president Sepp Blatter said Wednesday. "The power and the
responsibility lies with FIFA. The suspension of a federation is the ultimate
sanction available to the disciplinary committee.
"This is a fight against a devil which still exists, unfortunately, in our
sport."
FIFA spokesman Andreas Herren said later Wednesday he had not heard
Domenech's allegations. He said FIFA would investigate if a formal complaint was
made.
The French team also was targeted at home, with a far-right politician quoted
as saying minorities were over-represented on "Les Bleus."
"Perhaps the coach went overboard on the proportion of players of color,"
Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the National Front party, said in Wednesday's
L'Equipe.
Le Pen said he believed "that the French don't feel totally represented (by
the team), which no doubt explains why there isn't the warmth that there was
eight years ago." France's team has fewer non-white starters than in 1998, when
the nation embraced the national team for being "black, blanc, beur" ¡ª black,
white and Arab. Zinedine Zidane, a Frenchman of Algerian descent, scored two
goals in France's 3-0 victory over Brazil in the final.
After a spate of racist attacks in eastern Germany before the World Cup,
domestic and international media focused on xenophobia and right-wing
extremists, forecasting clashes between German troublemakers and hooligans from
abroad.
Security authorities have been on high alert, but local organizers, police
and government officials have said they've been caught unprepared for one thing:
the camaraderie that the World Cup has stirred.
"Before World Cup started we received information from our security
authorities that minorities planned to disturb World Cup by distributing racist
and nationalist ideas," said Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany's Interior Minister.
"They were not only not able not to do so, they even gave up."
