No it's not, not even in the slightest. Any black player from any country would have been booed that night and that is the whole point of the matter. Look at this way; England get beaten by Holland then some innocent Dutchman get beaten up, England get beaten by Denmark and some innocent Dane get kicked in, England get beaten by Germany and some innocent German gets smacked. Now Spain play England and the black players are booed, Spain plays the US and the black players are booed, Spain plays South Africa and the black players are booed. See the common link there? One is blatant thuggery (hating a group, if only briefly, because their team beat ours) and the other is blatant racism (Hating someone of a different colour because, well, they're a different colour) That's a poor way of trying to argue against my point, it really is. I disproved your accusation of English 'racism' above and as a result don't need to answer this really appaling use of logic.
i dont know who started it, but in future, for people like Prenn, there is a thread about racism 'bernabeu bigots.....' please take your arguements there. many of us do not appreciate the same old bitching about racism by supporters around the globe in our match thread and its no wonder we get pissed off when after evry match people take delight in bringing up the race issue we do not like it either, thats why there is a thread about it!! so please take any bitching about racism there! cheers!!
One, I've seen every game Spain has played at home for many years now thanx to my trusty and much loved TVE Internacional, and what you're writing is simply not true. (hence why some Spanish also put the blame at the English press for what happened) Yes, it isn't true when the team we were playing against actually had coloured players on the field either. The horror! That was a good story though. Two, let me know of how the English went to the lenghts they did with the Portuguese, with the people of France, Sweden, Denmark, Australia etc. Because I find it strange that it supposedly also happened to them, yet I saw no mention about it anywhere, unlike with what happened to the Portuguese people living in England. You've get a weird definition of 'disproving'. The fact is that the English people didn't treat all the team's fans they lost to the same as what they did to the Portuguese, the same as not every English player got treated the same. But sure, you did a great job 'disproving' that the actions of those English people was anything but out of the ordinary or racist, by your definition apparently. Hell, even if you could: "we use violence against foreigners all the time....proof that we aren't racist!" Not really helping your cause.
Ever heard of the evolution of language? 1. A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics. 2. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race. The second definition of race dates back to a time when before significant immigration into Europe, when nations were made up of people who were genetically similar, and is never used today except in a historical sense. In the absence of genetic data or obvious consistent physical differences, things like history, nationality and geography were indeed used to determine 'race'. After significant numbers of black people etc. arrived in Europe, nobody cared anymore about the so-called racial differences of indigenous Europeans; suddenly we were all white, the same race. Race came to be defined by obvious physical differences, and the old definition has been disappearing ever since. Racism has always been defined in terms of the new and current definition of race. (i.e. 1.) When was the last time you heard some refer to the 'German race' or the 'English race' in a non-historical sense? These terms just don't have any meaning today, as these countries have significant numbers of ethnic minorities in their populations who have every right to be considered English/German. To be honest, as the indigenous population of England has been altered through invasion so many times in history, any talk of an 'English race' is laughable even in historical terms. The games against Sweden, Denmark and Australia were friendlies. It's easier to be gracious in defeat when there's nothing at stake. And England losing friendlies is nothing new; under Sven it's practically expected. Most fans have stopped caring what happens in friendly games. I think most fans were expecting to lose against France, which inevitably lessened the emotional impact of the defeat. Heskey and Gerrard received most of the blame for turning victory into defeat. And of course we were still expected to qualify from our group; it isn't comparable to being knocked out of the tournament by Portugal. The anger of the hooligans, and hence the amount of trouble, depends on how serious the consequences of the defeat are. You're demanding unrealistically simple consequences in a complex world. Even if the intent of the hooligans were the same in all cases, the results would not be. The amount of trouble will be proportionate to the availability of potential targets (i.e. opposing supporters of that national team). Why did you think Jersey, a small island of the coast of France that doesn't even have a proper football team, was suddenly the stage for terrible incidents of hooliganism? The large (10%) Portuguese population, giving it a higher concentration of potential targets than anywhere else in England. Defeats against Brazil in world cups don't lead to such incidents, because finding a Brazilian football supporter in England isn't easy. Secondly, if the opposing nation has it's own groups of thugs who will respond in kind to the English hooligans, trouble can escalate and get even worse. Can a mod move all the relevant posts? Because what I'm posting now won't make much sense without the previous posts.
leave this thread how it is, but in future match threads it would be nice not to go into the race row again!
I know how the word racism is used, only in England apparently the hate against (the citizens of) a nation wouldn't be dubbed racism. It's nice that you would give explanations to what makes a race or racism though, but I think I'll stick with the official versions instead. Maybe then some people shouldn't say/insinuate that what happened with the Portuguese is the normal status quo when England lose a game, when apparently it isn't. Hell, with all those necessary factors (not a friendly, not a game where a loss could be expected, not a game against a team which doesn't have at least a couple of residents in England...did I miss any? ) it probably never happens at all for it to be considered normal behaviour to a loss.
Because RM won, and because he is a classy guy, Raul looked fine to me. Morientes, however, looked very depressed. And who can blame him? Call it bad luck if you will, but I really think the right thing to do is sell him during the winter transfer period. 4 world class srtikers are just too many.
I agree with you about Morientes. I don't doubt Raul's class, they don't come better than him when it comes to that. When he was subbed off, though, his face seemed to give something away.
Like Marca says, the same players (namely Raul), always get subbed off. Subject change - I just watched the Owen interview on Skysports. Interesting comment you & gazaad_5 made on the summaries of the Zidane interview. But the Owen interview coincided with the article.
He does always get subbed off, and he's always cool about it. I think the mood was just different with this game. It was a significant shift in the team's momentum from the recent weeks past, and so many other players scored (almost everyone that would be expected to), but he didn't. Raul is nothing if not graceful about his position in the team, but when he walked off, I thought his face just showed something. I'm sure he's well over it by now.
An online dictionary? You have very low standards as to what constitutes an 'official version'. One thing you have to realise is that the full English dictionary contains more than just all words in current usage; it is in fact also a history of the language, containing every word that has ever been in the language and every meaning it has ever had. Dictionaries in book form include as many of the most common words as they can; online dictionaries, with virtually no limits on space, often include much that is no longer relevant. From my home Oxford dictionary: 1. One of the great divisions of mankind with certain inherited physical characteristics in common. 2. A number of people related by common descent. 3. A genus or species or breed or variety of animals or plants. The old assignment of race based on history, geography, nationality was not deemed common enough today to include. Actually, now that I look at those definitions you provided, I don't think they actually prove what you think they do. Re: Racism No problems here. But what do they mean by race? Re: Race So, which meanings of race are applicable to racism? It doesn't specify. And it can't be all of them, unless you are seriously suggesting that hating a particular flavour of wine is racist. We are both using our intelligence to decide which definition(s) of race the racism entry is talking about. My assertion that only the first definition is applicable to racism is, in the context of these two dictionary entries, equally valid to your assertion that both the first and second definitions are applicable to racism. And if you scroll down the page on the race entry, you find other online dictionaries with subtly different definitions of race. Here, Webster's has a definition which includes something similar to definition 2. above, but adds the qualifier 'believed or presumed to belong to the same stock', i.e. a nation isn't applicable if it includes a significant number of people who have a very different ancestry to the rest. This would exclude the vast majority of nations today from being a race, and therefore they could not be a possible target of legitimate racism. Well, I personally never claimed that. And while it doesn't happen exactly like the Portuguese game every, the point is it does happen to some degree whatever the opponent. You usually get a certain amount of trouble after every competitive England game; how much depends on the result and the other factors I mentioned. You seem to be deriding the fact that I have put together a well thought out explanation of the differences between perceived hooligan responses to different situations. Are you suggesting we should not attempt complex analysis of complex problems? Would you prefer a simple wrong answer to a complex correct one? Or do you really believe that things are always simple in the real world? I suppose it would be so much simpler to just call it racism. That way, we don't have to expend the intellectual effort to fully understand the causes and consequences of football hooliganism, or bother to formulate plans to tackle it that are actually based on the annoyingly complex real world.
I ran my tape & watched closely. You are right, Raul did not look happy. But I still feel he maintained his professionalism. No one really likes to be subbed out any way.
Please, stop fooling yourself. The links to the online dictionary are there to show that even in the English language it constitutes as racism, which surprisingly is the same way in Dutch and Spanish, not just in print, but in the way the word is used. Go figure. Oh but wait, you - way more reliable than an online dictionary or rather common sense - would try and make me believe otherwise. I'm kind of surprised that you haven't gone so far in your reaching, and say that it couldn't possibly be racism, because we are all part of one human race. Again, I think I'll stick with the official version. Didn't say it was you, but then someone who would come to the conclusion this happened because England lost a game to Portugal, when it apparently never happened at this degree in previous losses, is basically the same thing. The excuse-train hasn't stopped yet, they make these things much more durable these days. You're right in one thing though, it's much simpler to call this racism, it's always easier to call things by their rightfull names, than try to hide it behind some 'complex intellectual analysis' and pretend it wasn't. Seriously, if you didn't have more than a couple of posts, I would have pegged you as somebody's sockpuppet. Because the denial is beyond normal.