Chelsea have spoken out against an awful incident that took place in a metro station in Paris before the club’s Champions League match against PSG, in which a crowd of fans pushed an unidentified black man off a train in a racist attack.
The fans were reportedly travelling to the Parc des Princes stadium for the tie-up, with the altercation taking place in the underground of the French capital. After pushing the unidentified man from the train, the crowd began chanting “we’re racist and that’s the way we like it”. Chelsea have now released a statement admonishing their fans’ behaviour, though UEFA has, yet again, failed to follow through on its supposed efforts to kick racism out of football.
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After footage of the incident was posted online, Chelsea released a statement saying: “Such behaviour is abhorrent and has no place in football or society. We will support any criminal action against those involved, and should evidence point to involvement of Chelsea season-ticket holders or members the club will take the strongest possible action against them, including banning orders.”
However, UEFA itself said that the incident was “outside their remit”, so would therefore not be staging an investigation themselves and, once again, failing to follow through on their alleged goal of removing racism from football. Anti-racism group Kick It Out have said that they hope wider bans are brought to the implicated individuals, though given UEFA’s ambivalence regarding the mater, that seems unlikely.
With the faces of those involved in plain view in the video, a police investigation will likely be able to identify them swiftly. London’s Metropolitan police have said that they are now reaching out to Chelsea in order to see if football bans can be applied by the club, though if UEFA were remotely interested in making good on making football more inclusive and getting rid of racism from the beautiful game, they’d be staging their own investigation into the matter and would be looking to prevent these idiotic individuals from bringing their bile to any game in the future.
Hopefully Chelsea will make good on their word and prevent these fans from ever returning to Stamford Bridge.
Watch video footage of the incident below:
