On Saturday in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Denmark pulled off a stunning upset victory over a wonderfully skilled Netherlands team. In Lviv, Ukraine, Germany mounted a deeply impressive attacking game against much-heralded Portugal team and came away with a 1-0 victory.
Good games. The vast Oranje Army of Dutch supporters and thousands of Danes sang and shouted their enthusiasm. The huge fan zones in the two cities in the Ukraine were filled with thousands of people in colourful outfits enjoying the party that is a soccer tournament these days.
And yet the dominant theme of media coverage of Euro 2012 – in the English-language media, anyway – has been sour, focusing on brief outbreaks of racist chanting at a handful of events. This has become the Racism Euro, and it's infuriating for any follower of the game.
The racial abuse of black soccer players shouldn't happen anywhere.
Mass public enthusiasm over sports teams can surge and twist in bewildering directions, some of it perverse, unleashing the worst of human nature. Large-scale sporting contests have taken on an outsize significance in our culture, and little wonder. In a digital age where we seem so interconnected, the ease of connectivity fools us into thinking we are engaged, but we are not, really.
A terrible irony of the dismay over the racism outbursts at Euro 2012 here in Poland and Ukraine – reports that the Czech Republic's only black player, Theo Gebre Selassie, was the target of racist chants during the game against Russia; racist abuse aimed at Netherlands players during a training session in Krakow – is that soccer as a sport has worked so hard to erase racism from the game and all attendant areas. Both FIFA, world soccer's governing body, and UEFA, its European equivalent, have for years engaged in public campaigns to highlight racism as ridiculous in society because race means nothing in soccer. It is the world's game, one of the few things shared by all races, nationalities and creeds. Year after year, the most famous soccer players in the world make speeches and appear in vast advertising campaigns, using the universality of star players' popularity and soccer's appeal, to condemn racism.
Logic would suggest it works. Club teams with players of various nationalities and colours stand as an example of the merits of race-blind unity. National teams that feature players from minorities reinforce and remind people that population patterns change .
It is hard to prove, though. It is far easier to highlight specific incidents of abuse by small groups filled with hate. That's what the BBC Panorama documentary (about racist chants at certain venues in Poland and Ukraine) which ignited the racism issue at Euro 2012 achieved. Some of those interviewed for the program, mainly those from Poland, have since condemned the program's generalizations.
Always, when big soccer tournaments unfold, theories abound about soccer's social role and dynamic. One is about the historical role of the soccer stadium in repressive countries as the sole place for saying the unmentionable in chants and songs – soccer games acting as a tool for the release of submerged attitudes and opinions. In some Arab countries, prior to the Arab Spring, soccer stadiums were where protests against regimes happened. But, clearly, this fact can be double-edged. In former Soviet bloc countries where there is little history of encountering outsiders, hatred of "the other," of difference itself, is now expressed in soccer stadiums while frowned upon by authority.
But mostly the hate is from small groups. And that too is likely to change as local teams truly become part of the larger soccer world and players of all backgrounds and colours are imported and integrated into teams.