Football’s silence over Argentina’s racist chanting is deafening and damning

The telling bit in the video of Enzo Fernandez and other Argentinian players singing a racist song about France following their victory in the Copa America final is the voice you can hear just at the end.

“Corta (el) vivo,” someone says — “stop the live stream.”

They know. They know what they’re saying. They know that what they’re saying is profoundly offensive, and they know what will happen if the outside world hears it.

This isn’t one of those things that can be equivocated. It’s not something that can be denied. The words are clear, and we know the words because it’s a song that has been around for a couple of years.

The words to the chant were: “They play for France, but their parents are from Angola. Their mother is from Cameroon, while their father is from Nigeria. But their passport says French.”

The song in question came from a group of Argentina fans before the 2022 World Cup final, which was flagged at the time by French anti-racist protestors as an “expression of a far-right ideology”.

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Frankly it’s bad enough that Argentina, presumably insulated from a PR perspective by their victory at the World Cup, didn’t seek to distance themselves more from the song, but the fact the players seem to have incorporated it into their celebrations is so much worse. If nothing else, it speaks to an unpleasant collective mentality and pervading culture that a group of players, at a moment of triumph, would choose this song as part of their celebrations.

It’s also worth noting, without wishing to detract from the blatant racism, the transphobia that is at play here too. The full lyrics of the song make reference to French players being “cometravas, like Mbappe.” “Cometravas” is a slang term that essentially translates as “someone who has sex with transgender people”.

Football in general has made positive steps to make the game more welcoming for LGBTQ+ people. Players who actively choose not to participate in anti-homophobia campaigns are thankfully few and far between, and those that do are often punished — like Monaco midfielder Mohamed Camara who, after covering up an anti-homophobia message on his shirt last season, was suspended for four games.

Things like this song, however, do not help and in fact actively harm the effort to make football a more inclusive place.

But if the song itself and the gleeful willingness of the players involved to sing it was not depressing enough, the aftermath has been almost as bad.

Fernandez himself issued an apology of sorts, claiming that he got “caught up in the euphoria of our Copa America celebrations” and the song did not “reflect my character or beliefs”. He also said, rather laughably, that “I stand against discrimination in all forms”. Let’s just say that when he is inevitably forced to participate in some sort of anti-racism campaign in the weeks or months to come, his words will ring hollow.

Chelsea themselves reacted in fairly responsible fashion, putting out a statement that set out their own position and values, saying they will use this as “an opportunity to educate” and that they have started an internal disciplinary procedure.

It will be interesting to see what comes of that process, given that if Fernandez was a fan and was caught singing that song in the stands at Stamford Bridge, he would be looking at the ugly end of a fairly lengthy stadium ban.

Beyond that though, things have been very quiet.

Wesley Fofana, the French Chelsea defender, called it “uninhibited racism”. David Datro Fofana, the club’s Ivory Coast striker, put a statement on Instagram saying that “racism in all its forms should be condemned in the strongest possible terms” and that the fight against racism “needs to be taken seriously by everyone involved in the sport”.

David Datro Fofana has also condemned the incident (Craig Mercer/MB Media/Getty Images)

It’s the last bit that feels the most pertinent. Because aside from those two responses, plus a picture posted by Nicolas Jackson of Fernandez hugging a black child, the meaning of which is open to interpretation, there’s not been much else.

Only black players have acknowledged the incident publicly so far. No white players have condemned the song. Perhaps some of Fofana’s white team-mates have offered private support, but as things stand there has been nothing beyond that.

As will be depressingly familiar, it is the black players that have been left to do the emotional work, to carry the mental baggage of having to deal with a racist incident. It enforces the idea that racism is a problem only for black people, when it’s a blight that shames us all. It isolates the black players, suggesting that it’s not something that anyone else has to worry about.

Imagine the power that would come from a white player standing up, unprompted, and condemning the song. It would provide a valuable symbol, but it would be more than just a surface-level thing. It would have genuine import.

The clubs of the other players in the video have, at the time of writing, decided not to comment. It is, in fairness, a little tricky to definitively identify exactly who is singing in the video, but everyone seems to be trying their best to ignore the issue entirely.

Perhaps we could give them the benefit of the doubt and say that, in time, they will speak to their Argentinian players and remind them of their responsibilities — not as footballers or representatives of a club, but as human beings. But at the moment it would seem that they are just hoping the whole thing goes away.

Even if it is tough to identify the individuals doing the singing, anyone who sat in silence while such a racist song was being sung probably could do with at least a talking-to. Surely the least we can expect from the clubs is for them to acknowledge the incident, that they will investigate and if it is found that any of their players were involved, they would face the appropriate punishment.

Chelsea are the only club to have said anything so far, not that we should necessarily be handing out extra credit for that: after all, they couldn’t possibly have avoided it.

Elsewhere though, crickets. For all the glossy campaigns and well-intentioned initiatives and solemnly shot ‘No to racism’ UEFA videos, when so much of the game is silent at moments like this, the idea that football is serious about combating racism is very hard to take seriously.

(Header photo: Peter Joneleit/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)