As depressing as it was, did the BBC´s Panorama documentary really tell us anything we didn't know? The key point being made was...There are extreme right wing minded individuals attending football in matches in Poland and Ukraine.
Sadly, there are like minded individuals attending football matches all over Europe.
Some countries and federations have made concerted efforts to tackle this problem but too many times clubs, law enforcement bodies and even federations deny that the problem exists (as both Polish and Ukrainian FA´s have done since the documentary aired on Monday 28th).
In the mid-nineties, Ross Kemp visited Poland as part of his Ross Kemp on Gangs series.
He attended the Krakow derby (between Wisla and KS Cracovia) deemed to be the most hostile of Polish league fixtures. The scenes from Kemps documentary and from the BBC documentary were a disturbing carbon copy.
7 years later and nothing has changed, the same gratuitous violence amongst rival fans, police attacks, anti-Semitic chanting, neo-nazi salutes and paraphernalia clearly displayed and black players being verbally abused.
Uefa and Fifa need to act and respond adequately, for too long they too have put their heads in the sand and looked the other way.
What the BBC documentary has succeeded in doing is putting the subject matter on the table again and the reaction globally from the programme means that Uefa cannot continue to ignore scenes as we witnessed in the Metallist Stadium in Kharkiv.
What the BBC documentary has succeeded in doing is putting the subject matter on the table again and the reaction globally from the programme means that Uefa cannot continue to ignore scenes as we witnessed in the Metallist Stadium in Kharkiv.
Documentary in full here (link working as of 30.05.12)
*** New Link, working as of 11.06 ***
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