Written by Recently, an incident involving a Bulgarian soccer team showed us what it means to have good leadership, as well as displaying the sad state of affairs in soccer for a country as a whole. Alan Pardew, the manager and technical director of CSKA Sofia, and assistant manager Alex Dyer both left their roles with the team due to racist abuse of their players, by their own fans and supporters nonetheless… Pardew, who was appointed as an adviser on football matters and technical director in November 2020, had recently taken over as first-team coach from April 2022 onward due to the resignation of former manager Stoycho Mladenov.
The reason for the fan’s behavior was due to a loss against close rivals, Levski Sofia, in the Bulgaria Cup final. Before CSKA Sofia’s next game against Botev Plovdiv, fans had thrown bananas at four of the team’s black players. I understand that fans could be angry at a bad result, especially in a final and against a rival, but this type of behavior is just simply not tolerable or acceptable by any standard no matter what the circumstance is. Now, it has been specified that this heinous act was committed by a small group of organised racist fans, but how come something like this was even allowed to happen? For people to even have this type of mentality, it can start to reflect badly on the country as a whole. The whole team did not want to play the game but eventually decided to due to loyalty toward the club.
This was a great display of compassion by Pardew, who is more known for his various controversies over the past, and it sets a good example for others to follow. It must’ve felt bad for him to leave the club, as he had talked about how the CSKA Sofia fans were so passionate about a month ago. However, I do feel bad for the players who were directly affected by the incident, and I do wish that there is some more protection offered to keep them safe. I wouldn’t want any player to not even feel safe at their own club. More needs to be done to prevent such racist events as a whole, but it just seems like racism at soccer games especially has reached an all-time high… My colleagues at Culture in Sports, Paul Robbins and Jeremy Piasecki, even wrote about a particular incident regarding Marcus Rashford and bad fan behavior in France respectively, which is just one of the many incidents that have been talked about within the last two years (see the last paragraph)… I wish that Bulgaria takes a deeper look into this specific incident unless they want to scare away potential new additions to the country, as I’d imagine players would not take to incidents like this kindly and play in this type of environment.
In general, this culture of football ultras needs to also be taken down several notches, as they are also responsible for potentially vicious events and acts of racism and violence. It should be noted, though, that ultras are usually loyal towards their own club and retaliate against their opposition, which is not what happened with the CSKA Sofia group. I wouldn’t be surprised by this mentality and behavior, though, as it doesn’t seem like it would take much for fans like this to turn on their own club… Just hoping that the club owners (Grisha and Danail Ganchev) can try to create a better culture and that they take care of their own players and staff…
For more recent information about racism in soccer, check out these links below:
1. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/12/1015239599/prince-william-and-boris-johnson-denounce-the-racist-abuse-of-englands-soccer-te
2. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/english-soccer-has-been-blighted-racism-also-leads-charge-against-n1274180
3. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/science/covid-racism-soccer-football-falco.html
4. http://edition.cnn.com/SPORT/football/racism-in-football/
5. https://www.gq.com/story/soccer-racism-on-the-rise
6. https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/racism-soccer-epidemic-mirrors-disturbing-trends-europe-advocates/story?id=67850877
7. https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1355052-racism-in-european-soccer-amodest-proposal-to-curb-the-problem-in-italy
8. https://theconversation.com/racism-in-football-new-research-shows-media-treats-black-men-differently-to-white-men-160841
9. https://andscape.com/features/win-or-lose-the-racism-faced-by-black-european-soccer-players-seethes-just-below-the-surface/