Good afternoon.
Enjoying the Euros? Rarely are the first games of any tournament much to write home about.
What is for certain is whatever Officer Dibble over there is in charge of the gendarmes, they need to pull there finger out and sharpish. The footage on YouTube of a steward being used as a stress ball by bovver boys has been viewed by close to 100,000 people.
In Lodz, a gang of about 50 masked Polish thugs targeted English and Russian accented fans in a violent burst of punches and kicks.
Report in the Irish Examiner this morning about more violence where 14 were arrested in Poznan. The suggestion being that Irish and Croatian fans were swooped on by Polish fans as they sat peacefully on the pavement terrace of the Sami Swoj pub.
What’s as chilling a prospect is a planned march by Russians this coming Tuesday (when Russia and Poland play each other) to mark Russia Day. The best bit of this insanity is that when this idea was broached last week a Polish ‘All Union’ mob asked for permission to ‘counter march’.
As ever in football it’s only punters like you and I that can see the difference between thoroughly good ideas and thoroughly bad ones. As far as racism goes, it’s not even a specter.
It’s been confirmed as present at training matches and tournament games alike. The Dutch had to listen to ‘monkey chants’ while they trained in Krakow. UEFA’s response was surreal. They said it had no plans to launch an investigation into the alleged racism, saying it believed the abusive chanting was in protest against Krakow not being chosen as one of the Euro 2012 host cities.
You cannot help but feel that Platini and the rest of the corpulent leeches that are responsible for awarding these things to those that whore and bribe themselves the best are living in another world. They cruise from one extravagant lunch to another with the air of the most pious of popes, not for a nano second considering that their decisions might carry consequences to real people.
At this rate people will be selling bits of Poland and the Ukraine like they did of the Berlin Wall.
Mario Mandzukic is a free agent this summer
I think mandaric is as well
Sorry to disappoint everyone but bilic has got a job in Moscow lined up for after the euros. Shame, would have liked that hat at the lane
I’ve got to say I think all this criticism for racism is a bit rich – we’ve sent Terry out in place of Ferdinand and it wasn’t so long ago that English fans were doing monkey chants and throwing bananas. There was also ‘that’ Ade song – not conceived by us but certainly sung by us.
We as a society are a bit more progressive now but whilst I whole heartedly agree that it’s wrong I don’t think the holier than though remarks from our press are really justified.
If anything having the tournament over there highlights the racism and will hopefully make them realise that it’s unacceptable?
IMO England is as racist as anywhere else in the world and full of thugs no diffrent to those Russians. Only difference is that the English are a sanctimonious bunch of c***s who believe that it is their job to call up the rest of the world on its wrongs when in fact they should be taking a long hard look at themselves.
John Terry – people in glass houses and all that!