There are racist ****s in all walks of life, not just football. The internet gives people relative anonymity and it just means that those who have a racist leaning use it to act like complete ****tards.
I've brought that up previously with a similar subject (homophobia in stadiums), and been told by people on here that you can't expect anyone to do anything when it's a big crowd.
True, but football culture encourages the kind of aggression and hatred towards people that attracts those ****tards. When was the last time rival tennis fans kicked off against each other and started spouting racial abuse? Can't be deflected away by trying to shift the blame somewhere else. There's a reason there has to be active anti-racism and anti-homophobia campaigns in our football and not in other sports.
I don't know Drudeboy - there's a lot of idiots following football and in society in general in this country - my soon to be father in law (and idiot in chief) greeted me when I 1st met him by saying 'I'm glad your not a spear chucker'!!! (the word tool springs to mind). But saying that I think there's a mentality with Twitter to tweet without thinking, esp with only 140 characters, and that there's such anonymity that it's almost a comp with some trolls to see who can tweet the most offensive thing. Unfortunately race, gender, disability and any trauma/accident (think Hillsborough) will always feature highly for a trolls insult.
I think it's very difficult to change other people's behaviour in big crowd mentality. People would be more likely to pull somebody up for shouting '******' than 'queer' though, sad though that might be I just think it's where we are at as a society.
Teams have, Manchester Uniteds **** defence has conceded 8 goals, Super defensive Chealsea have conceded 7 goals. Their bus parking seems to have failed.
At home Chelsea are more open at the back because they come out more and don't play ultra defensive, away though in the big games, Chelsea park the bus, and it's in those games that big teams need to find solutions to break through.
We're society though. That's just shifting blame away again. You can legitimately say that when racist and homophobic things happen in a stadium by a big crowd that it's hard to actively stop them ... but that's not an excuse for not reporting it. If people are doing that in the stadium, then that's a crime and the stewards and police need to be told. If enough people do it, it gets harder for them to brush under the rug until serious action gets taken. But these actions don't get reported anywhere near enough.
I agree with your sentiment, but I don't think you go to many football matches, because unfortunately the reporting you're calling for simply doesn't happen and that's what I'm talking about by big crowd mentality. If you heard an individual in the street shouting racist or homophobic abuse, you'd probably say something and tell him to shut the **** up. But in a football stadium they dynamic just doesn't work like that I'm afraid.
I don't think you read my post properly. I specifically said that reporting doesn't happen enough, and that it needs to. You can't just shift blame onto a vague "big crowd mentality" and say there's nothing we can do about it when you're one of the people in the big crowd. If you see something racist/homophobic happening, it's your responsibility to report it ... and that's the part which both can make a difference and which is not currently happening enough. No offence mate, but you're putting off a little bit of a "meh, whatcha gonna do" attitude about it.
If there was a steward nearby then probably yes, if not then honestly I wouldn't go seeking one out to report it.
