Pandering To Ibrox’s Need To Deflect Has Now Provoked An International Incident.

What a hysterical and vicious and xenophobic reaction there has been in this country to last night’s defeat for the Ibrox club in Prague. It is so bad that the British ambassador has been summoned to meet with the Czech foreign minister to discuss the matter.

That is when you know pro-Ibrox deflection has gone way, way, way too far.

Ibrox’s reaction to their defeat has been astonishing even by their standards. Kamara got himself sent off last night and that would have made headlines anyway, but the club’s portrayal of the whole night as if it was a cavalcade of racism is preposterous.

The ground was full of kids – children – and Sparta were venomous in denouncing the merest suggestion that the booing of Kamara was grounded in racist sentiment.

It is a scandalous charge to level against children … Kamara’s lawyer, a man with way too much to say for himself in relation to an incident at a football match many thousands of miles away, went out of his way to label the whole city of Prague racist.

Sparta’s club statement – as angry as any I’ve ever read – pointed out that such conduct in Scotland would have resulted in complaints to the Bar Association. He would be better off talking to his client, who is facing another UEFA ban for his inability to control himself.

His response to the Kudela incident was to physically assault someone in the tunnel. Last night his reaction to booing – that’s all it was, booing – was to get himself sent off.

Racism in the game is shocking and we’d all like to see it stamped out, but once again Ibrox is using it as a shield to avoid scrutiny in the aftermath of a defeat. Idiotic calls for Sparta to be kicking of the competition and mouthy individuals slandering the whole of the Czech Republic are not standing up against racism but promote xenophobia instead, which seems to be a lesser sin for these people.

I said this in the aftermath of the Kudela incident; a single player’s disgraceful conduct had somehow expanded into an attack on his club and his country, and those sentiments were nowhere near as nakedly on display as they are here.

“It is absolutely unbelievable that after a match we have to watch innocent children being attacked and face unfounded accusations of racism. Insulting children on the internet and in the media is unacceptable, desperate and ridiculous,” Sparta’s statement read.

“Stop attacking our children! Our club will proudly defend our children – our future and our pride. Slandering children on the internet is extremely cowardly. We are seeing unprecedented xenophobic statements against the Czech Republic, its citizens and even its children on social media.”

The news, tonight, that the British ambassador has been summoned to talk to their foreign minister on Monday means that an Ibrox defeat and their inability to deal with it rationally has now sparked an international incident, which is remarkable even by their standards.

“Enough! Intentionally spread, disgusting insults against Czech children in the media and on the internet do not belong to football and even less so to good relations between two countries,” Kulhanek, their foreign minister, wrote on Twitter.

In the aftermath of the match, before Gerrard was even made aware of the hysteria – the “racism” was so bad that he didn’t even notice it during the game – he was actually blaming his own board for the defeat because they hadn’t given him enough money to spend.

How grateful they must all have been that they had a single child holding up a handmade sign to focus on later. How grateful that the media had something else to occupy their thinking. How grateful that Kamara doesn’t need to explain his own indiscipline or Gerrard his tactics. How grateful that they had a whole country to kick and loads of people in this one perfectly happy to get involved in that.