The Beginning- Mario Balotelli and Milan v. Italy

The first incident that comes to my mind about racism in soccer is that of Mario Balotelli, for AC Milan, that occurred about a year ago today.

As background, Balotelli was born to Ghanian parents, and was raised by Italian (and white) parents in Brescia, about an hour and a half east of Milan.

He is recognized as one of the top young players in the world, was bought by Milan from Manchester City in the 2012/2013 winter transfer window to help salvage an awful season.

Just before he arrived, Milan played a small team called Pro Patria in a friendly over the break. About 20 minutes into that game, Kevin Prince-Boateng, another Ghanian player, kicked the ball into the stands and left the pitch with the rest of the team.

He did this because he was being abused by the crowd.

They waved bananas at him. They made monkey noises at him.

All in 20 minutes, so Boateng did all he could- leave.

He was applauded and supported by his teammates, coaches, fans (of both Milan and Pro Patria), and everyone in between. Since then, he has been a bigger and bigger part of anti- racism campaigns in Europe for UEFA and FIFA. He's essentially the anti- racism spokesperson in the soccer world, and this was one of the incidents that brought even more attention to this issue.

Fast forward about a month, to when Balotelli arrived in Milan. His first game, what came from the crowd?

Monkey noises. More racist chants.

In his first game in Italy, Balotelli was racially abused through the whole game.

He managed to handle it well both on the pitch and in his press conference afterwards. But as the season went on, he was abused pretty much every game.

I'm not even exaggerating.

He took racist abuse in at the very least every away game.

A few home games he even took racist abuse from the away fan sections.

And, as expected, he became more and more bothered by it. However, he said he would not let Milan down, so he continued playing. The culmination of the season came in Milan's final home game, their second to last game.

This was about a year ago or so today. Milan was playing Roma in Milan, and Milan needed a win. As a fan, I had the game on.

In the second half, in the middle of play, the referee took the ball and blew his whistle. Everyone stopped. Both coaches looked around, confused. The Milan players went to the ref and pointed at a section of the crowd, looking enraged.

Balotelli looked at the same section, put his hands on his hips, and then threw his hands up at them. He then signaled to them to be quiet. The Roma players talked to the ref, and the ref sent Roma captain Francesco Totti to the section.

It was a Roma fan section that had been chanting racist things at Balotelli and other black Milan players for 10 minutes.

The announcers described that the game could be stopped entirely.

After five minutes, the game resumed. After the game ended, every player and coach on the pitch said the same thing- that should not have happened.

The fans, obviously, should not be doing this. Every player has the same stance- that it needs to stop.

The problem is that, to my knowledge, there was no punishment handed down for Roma.

At the most, there was a fine for the club. The players all apologized on the part of the fans and said it was ridiculous and shameful.

But there was nothing else.

This is a huge, recurring problem, but nothing is done about it that does anything, as I'll talk more about in my next post. But this was the incident that sparked action on the part of many, and brought even more attention to an issue that has plagued the world's sport for years.

About Me and Why I'm Here

Hello there! My name is Patrick Stoll, and I am a Journalism major at the University of Maryland,
College Park.

I am also in the Honors Humanities Program, which allows me to look at things in a
more "humanistic" and deeper way, like a liberal-arts college while still having the benefits of a large
university.

One of the things we do is a "Keystone" project, a two-year project where we take some
aspect of the humanities and work with it in our own personal way.

Here is where the blog comes in:

This blog will serve as my Keystone project.

And about what, you may ask?

I'm glad you asked.

I will be talking about, as the title suggests, the world's biggest problem in the world's biggest sport, or rather, racism in soccer.

I am an avid soccer (and sports in general) fan. My club is AC Milan, who I support even in the darkest of times in the club (like right about now, but that is a different subject).

While watching soccer, I have seen the problem of racist abuse on the part of fans, and players as well, develop into a constant problem that plagues the entire soccer world.

Everywhere from Spain to Germany, Italy to France, England to Russia, and even Brazil and Argentina.

What I want to do is analyze this issue.

I will be posting every week (I hope) about any new incidents that happen in the soccer world that relate to this issue.

I wish I had a solution to propose for these incidents, but I don't, at least not right now.

So on that note, welcome to my blog, thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy!

-Patrick