opinion
P. Köster: Cabin Sermon
A game was finally abandoned due to a racist incident. But why now?
Referee Nicolas Winter speaks to player Aaron Opoku
© DPA
Canceling the third division game between Duisburg and Osnabrück because of racist abuse was the right thing to do. And it’s shameful for professional football that it was the first time. Says star– Voice of Philipp Koester.
There would have been a lot of nice excuses. That it was just a single perpetrator. That the man was immediately identified and taken away. That the fans of both clubs immediately chanted “Nazis out”. And that all the players on the field showed their solidarity immediately.
But then: abandonment of the game.
For the first time ever in European professional football, a game was abandoned on the weekend due to racist insults. The jungle sounds that a Duisburg spectator blared at the Osnabrück player Aaron Opoku from the main stand of the MSV stadium led to the abrupt end of the third division game. The striker was unable to continue playing, his teammates and those of the opponent showed solidarity and also left the pitch.
The consequence of Duisburg is new
And all that remains to be said is: finally! Because as encouraging as the joint action of the players was, it is so shameful for European club football that it had to be in 2021 and 22 third division players had to take heart before they finally responded consistently to the racism in the stands. This time it was not appeased, negotiated, calmed down and kicked off again as usual, but it was made clear that the game cannot continue if players are belittled by spectators because of their skin color.
This consequence is new. There have been countless such incidents over the past few decades. And even if it seldom happens today that whole fan blocks sing jungle sounds to offend dark-skinned players, as in the 1990s, racism has by no means disappeared from the ranks, the list of xenophobic failures is terrifyingly long.
And with just as terrible regularity, the affected players were left alone. Sometimes the game was continued immediately, sometimes debated and then continued, sometimes the player was scolded for being too sensitive, sometimes even accused of having provoked the protests himself. Samuel Eto’o, Mario Balotelli, Gerald Asamoah and Kevin-Prince Boateng – they all had to justify themselves for not ignoring the insults. Motto: You make so much money that there are a few downsizing in the price.
Philipp Köster: Cabin Sermon
Philipp Köster, born in 1972, is the founder and editor-in-chief of the soccer magazine “11 friends”. He collects jerseys and stadium books, knows the Romanian champions from 1984 and can recite Borussia Dortmund’s starting eleven in the 1986 relegation game against Fortuna Köln by heart: Eike Immel, Frank Pagelsdorf, Bernd Storck, … He is also the author of numerous football books, including about the history of the Bundesliga, and was named “Sports Journalist of the Year” in 2010. Above all, he is a supporter of the glorious Arminia from Bielefeld.
Important signal: you are not alone
The most important signal to abandon the game is therefore not to the racists in the stands, who will hopefully be punished and banned from the stadium for life. No, it is much more important to send a clear signal to every player who experiences something like this, and that is: You are not alone, we are by your side and support you.
Now any strategy to fight racism in the stadiums has its weaknesses. It can be asked whether abandoning the game and the resulting headlines do not give the perpetrators exactly the attention they wanted to generate. Precisely for this reason, the three-step plan developed by the DFB, which as a first measure does not provide for an abandonment of the game, but rather an interruption and a stadium announcement, is a perfectly suitable structure in order not to give racists too much influence. But it is also clear that no step-by-step plan in the world can take effect if a player is as shocked by the incidents as Aaron Opoku was on Sunday.
Then it can only be about showing solidarity and cooperation between the athletes. That is exactly what Duisburg and Osnabrück players, coaches, officials and fans did yesterday. And that’s why yesterday was a bad, but in the end also encouraging day for football.