The meeting between the UK Ambassador to Prague and the Czech foreign minister has today resulted in a demand from their government that the SFA either dissociates itself from or issues an apology for Marvin Bartley’s despicable tweet of last week, where he appeared to compare the country to a barrel of rotten fruit.
This, of course, is part of the continuing fall-out from the spectacularly over the top response to Glen Kamara being booed in midweek.
By children, of course, which is the principle reason why the Czech government is so furious and appalled by the coverage of this incident.
Or rather, this non-incident which is what most fair minded people can see it is.
Bartley’s tweet was beyond stupid and as someone who’s an official part of the SFA they should have moved more quickly to disavow it. They shouldn’t need a demand from a foreign government before they accept that it was bang out of order.
Xenophobia is okay but we draw the line at booing?
Is that the position of our governing body? Are they going to accept, now, that his comments were a disgrace? Or are we headed for another round on this?
This comes after a weekend where a Ross County supporter was accused of hurling a racial slur at a Dundee Utd player. The media has been oddly silent on the ramifications of that, perhaps because we don’t like to admit that we have racists in this country too.
They are equally silent on the way Malky Mackay played down that incident, and even had a ridiculous dig at the Utd manager for holding up an anti-racism t-shirt at the end of the game.
Mackay of course worked at the SFA not that long ago, in spite of a record for racist and misogynist comments of the worst kind, and which have virtually made him a pariah in England. For our national association to lecture anybody on this matter is grotesque.
It is time they got a grip on this, properly, and they can start by telling Bartley that he’s on his own, that his comments crossed a line, that we can’t have an Equalities officer who slanders a whole country.
And they need to apologise to the Czechs at the same time.
That will be a start, at least.