Ignorant? They aren't discriminating based on my race, they are questioning the country I identify with (Me personally I couldn't care less as it's not important to me) but I can understand it would offend some people, I just don't understand how it's racist as they aren't discriminating against them due to their race - Unless it's my understanding of racism?
Argentina players singing racist chant targeting French players after Copa America final
- Thread starter Gandalf Greyhame
- Start date
Obviously you want to tar Martinez and Garnacho with your Enzo brush but first you have to provide some proof.
Nice of Mascherano to vouch for all of Argentina. If you can't see any racism anywhere in your country then there's a very good chance it's your own thresholds that are in question.
There just doesn't seem to be a willingness from South American football federations to learn from their mistakes. They must know what will be perceived by other nations as racism yet they seemingly choose wilful ignorance over growing tolerance.
You realize that the term racism isn't just limited to "race"?
Were dolmens early attempts at goal posts?
I don't want to tar anyone with anything. In fact, the video I saw shows Martinez facetiming someone.
If you think it was just Enzo then fair enough. It sounded like a lot of people signing to me.
I do understand it can extend to where someone is born, it's the discriminating against part I don't get here, I don't see evidence of that. It's rude to insinuate they are of a different race but I don't see evidence of how they are being treated differently because of that in a bad way?
It was Enzo and an array of lowly backroom staff who due to them not being public figures it would be inappropriate to name.
You don't think that it's discriminating to suggest that people bred and born in France aren't french but Africans? Why exactly are they not french or shouldn't they be french?
Just thankful that Messi wasn't involved and was not even on the bus. Probably just went home to his Miami home or to the hospital. Leo is innocent
Reading through this thread reminded me of Royston Drenthe who once gave an interview where he complained about Messi calling him 'negro'. More than a decade ago...
"I played against [Messi] many times and we always have problems with each other," Drenthe said.
"You know what bothers me so? That tone with which he always says, 'negro, negro'. I understand that negro in South America is very common, but we cannot stand it.
"When Hercules played Barcelona, during the game I had a small altercation with him. He gave me a hand in the match and again said a few times, 'hola negro'.
"Mahamadou Diarra, my team-mate at Real, could explode if 'negro' was aimed at him. The Argentineans Gabriel Heinze and Gonzalo Higuain said it initially on the training ground, but they were stopped."
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/18024212
They haven't fought in the 100years' war.
The Chelsea dressing room is going to be extremely awkward when they all come back from holidays.
Not sure how Enzo comes back from that in the eyes of his teammates, especially seeing as nobody seems in the mood to apologise for it.
Not sure how Enzo comes back from that in the eyes of his teammates, especially seeing as nobody seems in the mood to apologise for it.
Which isn't even a given. As an example the father of Alexandre Dumas was mixed and he was a french general. How many black or mixed french soldiers fought during centuries that preceded him?
yeah I really think he could be done at Chelsea
probably not this window but could see them shipping him out after another season
He's apologised via instagram to the public and to the players on the phone. You'd imagine he'll also have a rather awkward face to face when he's back in the country.
I know you're not seriously asking but I was just joking. Of course people born and raised in France are French, regardless of where their parents or grandparents might have come from. Also France can issue passports to whoever they deem fit and these people are also French, by law. It's weird we have to keep talking about stuff like that in this day and age but there we are.
Well in many secluded parts of the north east of England in 1990, many people would never have even really seen a black person or a middle eastern person, other than on TV. And in 1990 a lot of older people 60+ were born in 1930 and earlier. The older generations I knew were obviously ignorant and probably racist, but coloured was definitely used a lot to describe foreigners with a darker skin tone.
Half of the time it was not even about racism, they just didn't know any better unfortunately.
This thread is gonna fulfil Godwin’s Law soon.
Having Argentina's VP spout her rubbish today shows me there is a bigger problem than just Fernandez in that team. He is just taking most of the flack, because he is not very clever. There is no worthwhile leadership over there. None of the leaders on that bus...no voice of sanity to say hey knock it off. Similarly, I see no condemnation from Messi (or manager...where was he?), and Mascerano and the VP coming to Fernandez defense.
Cant expect to get the intellectually challenged like Fernandez in line when your leaders are turning a blind eye to it.
Cant expect to get the intellectually challenged like Fernandez in line when your leaders are turning a blind eye to it.
The reference is to a rumour of Mbappe supposedly being in a relationship with a trans woman. "Sleeping with trans people" is a very vanilla translation, they use a term that is meant to be derogatory both to trans people and those attracted to them, which is why I think something like tr*nnyfecker is the most accurate translation. That's also why they call Mbappe a f*g, because the point is to really hammer in how trans women are actually men, and so Mbappe is a man sleeping with a man, which makes him gay, which makes him a f*g because homosexuality is disgusting. Because that f*g Mbappe is a tr*annyfecker, the rest of the black French players are assumed to be as well.
The point of the song is to be as offensive as possible. The target is Mbappe and the rest of the French players, with special focus on the black French players. They are trying to be as offensive as possible, and the way they are doing that is by very clearly saying that they are not actually French because they "come from" Africa. If it wasn't meant in an offensive way it wouldn't have made it into the song, and African heritage being incompatible with Frenchness is the message. That is why it's racist.
That, I think is starting to become the big/interesting issue here. The Vice President of the country, prominent players and figures… they seem to be offended that other people are offended. It is an odd stance and strategy to take unless the “cultural bubble” you refer to (which is an excellent way to put it) makes them genuinely don’t get it.
He is not this, he is just racist as is most of those people
Yeah its a tricky situation for CFC at this point given that the President and VP of Argentina all the way down don't feel that anything wrong happened. The club will likely need to get out of ahead of this story with more releases and possibly a mea culpa presser with Enzo. Otherwise, the issue will continue to fester well into the season.
They might not really get it as they have been insulated from many objecting. When you hear the excuses so far, they are first of allover the place, but the only that really holds anything is the Mascerano one where he said it was meant as a joke. Now, obviously there is nothing funny about it, but the idea that making fun of people's race, sexuality etc....is perfectly acceptable shows the divide here. They are nowhere near crossing the Rubicon on their way to empathy and civility.
They may truly think there is nothing wrong in what they were singing because they are "having fun or joking around". They fail to put two and two together.
There is probably also no bullying going on in Argentinian schools according to the same folks...wild guess.
I'm not sure I understand this distinction.
The definition of 'discrimination' in Wikipedia is: the process of making unfair or prejudicial distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong.
Here, an unfair or prejudicial distinction is being made between Frenchmen, based on the country of origin of their parents, often falsely assumed.
CONMEBOL has fined multiple Argentinian football clubs because their fans yell racist shit at players. They get it, they just don't care.
I think he means on a national level. On a separate note, I am not sure fines do a whole lot, especially in the amount often quoted.
Hopefully there is a written standard for punishment of this kind of egregious racism and if there is the punishment must be harsh. We can tolerate a lot of things if life but one of the things we cannot tolerate is racial abuse.
If someone says Saka, Konsa, Eze and Mainoo aren't really English as opposed to players like Kane, Stones and Pickford, you wouldn't see the discriminating part in that? Yet all these people are born and raised in England. Seems pretty clear to me.
As a joke it could absolutely work but the other side as to be on the joke which is rarely the case in that kind of context. You can have messed up jokes with actual friends but those aren't supposed to be done when said friend isn't around and isn't responding.
Now I wonder if I shouldn't make up a song about Argentines being raging racists and colonials, as a joke.
The song was written specifically about Mbappe, who made comments prior to the World Cup about “European” teams being superior to those from South America. The song was widely (and rightly) denigrated on multiple levels during and after the World Cup.
If the lyrics translation is correct, the Argentine team essentially expanded the song “he” to “they” to include the rest of the black players, and apparently have been singing it since the last World Cup.
So if the question is why they didn’t target people like Theo Hernandez that are French, but could have had different ethnic backgrounds? Maybe they do. They are not setting a high bar in Argentina at the moment
Another question is if Mr. iPhone from Lagos has more in common with his ancestors than with a contemporary Irish guy.
Two of these three can understand each other and share common cultural references and (broadly) understandings of the world. The third does not.
Why is FA/PL not launching its own investigation on this?
Doesn't it blatantly single out and target Afro-French players? If you sing about Muslims and people deem it racist, you're going to argue "No it's religiously discriminatory but nobody is targeting Arab-looking folks as a race"
as a gotcha? In Argentina, Uruguay, and Latin America racism is rife and downplayed, and terms like negro/negrito are used as general insults because the idea that black skin is inferior is deeply embedded in their society. Hence when Messi or Suarez use negro/negrita as insults, fellow Latams defend it with "it isn't racist, white Latinos get called negrito too". Imagine if Brits used Blackie as a byword for tosser then deny it's racially-charged because everyone gets called Blackie. You'd have to be deliberately obtuse to not see the racial implications of targeting Blacks and using them as an insult specifically.
By that logic, don't a lot of Argentinians have links to Nazi Germany? Many have family hailing from fascist Italy, Francoist Spain or Nazi Germany; if other countries sing songs about how Argentinians are evil white Nazis who genocided the indigenous natives and stole their land, and their heads of state publically backed those songs and said it was merely stating the truth... You're telling me Argentina wouldn't be upset?
For your first question if we go back 4000 years, no.
For the second one, yes.
And I didn't tell you that ethnic groups can't exist in 2024, I'm telling you that they don't exist in Europe or to be more careful they are not as clear cut or relevant than you are suggesting. And the reason is because in Europe two things have happened it's a massive cultural melting pot and the deliberate erasing of ethnic and local cultures in favor of nationalism around the time of creation of nation-states in Europe which is roughly 200 to 300 years old.
And as an example of how big of a melting pot it is the main faith and legal foundation to modern day Europe comes from the Middle-East and modern Turkey.
Argentina star blasts Chelsea players for unfollowing Enzo Fernandez over racist video
Rodrigo De Paul has criticised Chelsea’s players for unfollowing Enzo Fernandez in response to his video of Argentina’s players singing a racist song after their Copa America win.
Both Chelsea and FIFA have opened investigations after Fernandez filmed his Argentina teammates in a live video on Instagram singing a racist song about France’s players on the team bus following their victory over Colombia in the Copa America final on Sunday evening.
On Tuesday evening, Fofana shared the video on X with the caption: ‘Football in 2024: uninhibited racism.’
Fofana, Gusto and Disasi have also unfollowed Fernandez on Instagram.
But Atletico Madrid midfielder De Paul, who plays alongside Fernandez for Argentina’s national side, has defended the 23-year-old and has described the reaction from Chelsea’s players as ‘strange’.
‘What happens with this song thing is that one doesn’t analyse the song from the pitch, one sees it more in relation as a joke,’ De Paul said in an interview with Migue Granados on OLGA.
‘Then I can understand people who have suffered racism and don’t like it.
‘I think there are places… I think that if a person, or some of Enzo’s teammates as it happened, feels offended, the way to do it is to call him, not expose him on social media.
‘There is a bit of malice there or wanting to put Enzo in a place that has absolutely nothing to do with it.
It’s very strange, it’s like kicking a fallen tree. You call him and say, ‘dude, what happened?’.
‘If you have a relationship… these are people you’re with in the dressing room all the time, unfollowing him seems pointless to me.
‘You call him and say, ‘listen, I think we might feel affected by this, why don’t you post a message apologising to the people’, and the subject ends there. Don’t make such a show of it.
What I can say in defence of Enzo is that, obviously, the song is there because it was there, because people sing it.’
I didn’t realise that, will obviously help a little.
I’d imagine utd players would want to speak to garnacho and Martinez as well. If they were there and singing it, they’ve been pretty lucky not to be in the same boat as Enzo.
Wonderful, more reasons to dislike that twat de Paul.
To add to this, I can give people the benefit of the doubt about a 'joke' or a bad phrasing in a context in which it makes sense. If Fernandez was in hot water because he walked into the Chelsea locker room and said "hey guys wanna hear a funny song about the French NT" and sang this, then I get it. But that's not what happened. They got caught doing this in private.
Like, imagine if your wife/husband/whatever finds out that you have a second phone and it's full of flirtarious conversations with other people and you go "well I didn't know I couldn't talk to other people." It's laughable.