X is for Xenophobia
Scottish football will moan loudly that it has no problem with xenophobia, but that’s basically untrue.
It exists here as it does everywhere else.
The most prominent sign of it is the treatment handed out to Neil Lennon, but it also applies to the way James McCarthy and Aiden McGeady were treated when they opted to play for Ireland.
Gordon McQueen was only one of the voices who spoke out against them both before they came to play against Scotland; branding them traitors, he said “I’ve got no time for these players. You’re born in Glasgow but then you go and play for somebody else? What’s that all about? I’m not having that at all. Will it be hard for them coming back here with Ireland? I really hope so. I hope they get a horrible reception because they deserve it.”
Anti-Irish racism is not the only sort out there though.
The media’s response to Ronny Deila was disgraceful; the perception that a Norwegian was not cut out to manage in Scottish football was widespread amongst the press corps. This is not the only example of a Celtic appointee being treated this way. Wim Jansen was labelled “the worst thing to hit Hiroshima since the atom bomb” and Dr Jo Venglos was slaughtered. The undertone of racism was there in all those cases.
On top of that, we have a peculiarly British sentimentality about the integrity of our own players and our own officials. Scandals have hit every major association in Europe; it is not only arrogance that promotes the idea that “our officials don’t do that.”
It’s racism too.
The belief that foreigners are more corrupt, their refs more susceptible to bribery and that their players more readily dive.
Scottish football is full of stupid attitudes like this.
Never has this been clearer than in the case of Gordon Smith and his comments, whilst SFA Chief Executive, in regards to Saulius Mikoliunas and his alleged dive when Lithuania played against Scotland back in 2007. Speaking after the game, and in his official capacity, Smith said things that should have had him fired.
“I was disappointed in Mikoliunas,” he said. “It could be that he reverted to what is acceptable in Lithuania because he was playing for his national side, even though it’s unacceptable here.”
But he wasn’t content leaving it there either, he also had words for the referee in that game, who was from Slovenia. “”I don’t think the referee helped the situation, either, possibly because he comes from a country where that sort of behaviour isn’t so frowned upon.”
When that is the attitude at the top, how can we possibly keep it out of the stands?
