Comments on: The Sweeper: The Racist Abuse of Mario Balotelli

By: The Sweeper: Australia’s World Cup Bid – This Is A Knife | Pitch Invasion

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:31:21 +0000

[...] there is a good piece on the abuse of Mario Balotelli, by Tom Kington in the Guardian: noting that he is receiving special and unwelcome [...]

By: Tom Dunmore

Tom Dunmore — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:48:23 +0000

LJ, you’ve rather missed the point that Supriya made….

By: LJ

LJ — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:45:33 +0000

That “if you jump, Balotelli dies” chant is not nice, but isn’t racist. Balotelli is targetted because of his attitude and the fact he plays for Inter. He’s suffered much worse abuse at other grounds like Cagliari, but no one bats an eyelid at that. It’s just when it’s Juventus that the media wants to create a fuss.

By: Martha

Martha — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:31:24 +0000

You’re right, Lincoln, even the support of Balotelli tends to be tinged with racism — much of what I’ve seen focuses on his Italian nationality, implicitly suggesting that were his passport from Ghana, it would be ok to abuse him.

By: Lincoln

Lincoln — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:09:37 +0000

do you live in italy? nobody is talking about chants against balotelli in the italian press. the match has happened, they hyped it up, got a lot of column inches out of it and now they are back ignoring the problem.
it was only a story to make the match a little bit more ‘exciting’ and tense.

as for martha. inter fans held a banner reading ‘i’d rather be black than bianconero [black and white]‘. which, rather idiotically, implicitly says that there is indeed something wrong with being black. smart.

By: Martha

Martha — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:28:16 +0000

Addendum: I see they’ve finally added a few other responses, including Supriya’s. That’s something, but it’s nowhere near enough.

By: Martha

Martha — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:25:41 +0000

Juve have been fined 25,000 Euros for racist abuse of two Inter players during the match (can’t wait to hear from Campanale and the other apologists what the other victim did to deserve his treatment), while 40,000 Euro fines have been imposed on the Roman teams for the fireworks and smoke bombs thrown by their fans during the Roma derby last night. With those priorities, we’re all fools to expect anything to change.

And, given that the only responses Football Italia have published to Campanale’s repulsive piece are those congratulating her, I suspect we’ll be waiting a long time for her to even acknowledge the existence of other opinions. In the meantime, I won’t be reading Football Italia anymore; I hope others will join me.