Why tomorrow’s Chemnitzer friendly may not be so friendly
Posted on July 12th, 2012 | 57 Comments |
Actually, I sincerely hope that I am, just as the BBCs “Panorama” programme did when they screened a documentary about racism in Polish and Ukrainian football on the eve of the recent European Championships. However, I feel that even if things do go well in the first of Newcastle United’s first pre season friendlies tomorrow evening against Saxon third division side, Chemnitzer FC, it was an extremely foolish decision to arrange it against a team with such an awful reputatiion for overt racism with it’s fans, and even it’s security staff (see below) with several black and / or Muslim players in the current Newcastle United side. One thing’s for sure, there certainly won’t be the same kind of policing that there was at the above mentioned European Championships when the game takes place.
Saxon lower league sides are one of the largest hotbeds of neo-nazi activity in the whole of football, and Chemnitzer FC are one of the worst. As you will see below, sometimes the behaviour of a very vocal and violent group of their fans can go far beyond the usual monkey chanting and so on. But first, here’s an extract from a 2010 report by the European Forum for Migration Studies (EFMS). On German lower league football in general, especially amateur sides such as Chemnitzer, they write:
“Experts unanimously agree that racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic incidents are more common in lower football leagues, i.e. in amateur sports, than they are in the upper (professional) football leagues. According to the sport sociologist Dembowski, “open racism in football in Germany has increasingly shifted towards the lower amateur leagues sincethe late 1990s”
On Chemnitzer FC in particular, it recounts some infamous incidents from the past involving Chemnitz fans. On a game in 2008 when the Turkish Berlin club, Türkiyemspor Berlin played Chemnitzer, the report states:
“During the fourth league football game between the migrant football club Türkiyemspor Berlin and the Chemnitzer FC in August 2008, a group of some 50 Chemnitz supporters yelled xenophobic and neo-Nazi slogans such as “Naziland Ostdeutschland”, “Berlin bleibt Deutsch” [Berlin remains German] and “Noo-Na-Ra”, which stands for a neo-Nazi group named “Hooligans, Nazis and Racists.”
On another more serious incident involving Chemnitzer, this time in a 2006 game against the heroic Hamburg anti-nazi club, St Pauli, who have perhaps done more than any other club in Germany to fight racism in football in recent times, it reported:
“The strong links between neo-Nazi, extreme right-wing groups and the football fan milieu are underscored by what happened prior and during the regional league (Regional-Liga)21 game between Chemnitz FC and the FC St. Pauli in April 2006. It is assumed that members of the informal right-wing group NS Boys (NS officially stands for “New Society”) were waving red flags with a white circle that resembled the Nazi flag of the Third Reich; only the swastika was missing. Some 200 persons in the Chemnitz block sang anti-Semitic and xenophobic chants (“we build a subway from St. Pauli to Auschwitz”, “we hate Turkey” and “Hoo-Na-Ra”). St. Pauli officials were called “Judensäue” (Jewish pigs). Prior to the game, several members of the NS Boys yelled right-wing extremist slogans (“Sieg Heil”) in Turkish hair dresser salons, and some 40 people in typically right-wing clothes who had been refused entrance at the stadium rampaged through the streets of St. Pauli shouting anti-Semitic (“Juda verrecke”) and xenophobic (“Türken raus”) slogans. As it turned out, the Chemnitzer FC cooperated at that time with two security services in the stadium – one of them run by the person who founded the neo-Nazi group Hoo-Na-Ra in the 1990s.”
Chemnitzer also employed a man called called Thomas Haller as a head of security even though he was a racist thug who had been jailed several times for football violence. In an interview for the Daily Mail newspaper in 2006, he told journalist, David Jones, that he “couldn’t stand” black players.
I will spare you from other examples though they do exist.
Now I don’t wish to tar all Chemnizer fans with the same brush, nor Saxons and East Germans in general. I’ve known some very nice Saxons who despise such things as racism, anti semitism, islamophobia and far right politics in general. However, whatever happens this evening, it was a foolish decision in the extreme to arrange this game in Chemnitzer’s own backyard bearing in mind their history with the kind of shameful incidents mentioned above.
Is it really respectful, or worth it to send our great African and Muslim players such as Hatem Ben Arfa, Demba Ba, Papiss Cisse, Cheick Tiote and Shola Ameobi, not to mention mere youngsters such as Mehdi Abeid and new kid, Gael Bigirimana, into that kind of hornet’s nest for the sake of a pre season friendly against amateur opposition? After all, they could have just gone to Darlo again and got much the same kind of test, or even better, arranged a German friendly with St Pauli instead.
I don’t think it is.
Apologies for this rant on the eve of the Magpies’ first game of the season, but I’m afraid I just couldn’t contain myself on this issue for the sake of the players I’ve mentioned above.
Chemnitzer FC vs Newcastle United, Stadion an der Gellertstraße, Chemnitz. Kick off: 6:30pm (local time). TV – None.
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NUFCBlog Author: workyticket
workyticket has written 1095 articles on this blog.
Article over the top. Unfortunately we still have racist half wits among our own fans. The Germans could not stop the British Army and they have no chance stopping The Toon Army.