Racism Abounds In European Soccer
Editor's Note: The following is taken from the dailymail.co.uk piece titled "Stalin's Savage Legacy And The Ugly Scene When I Took A Black Football Fan To The Ukranian City Where England Played This Month."
They were just two young men out to watch a match on TV over a beer. Yet the moment they walked through the bar door eyes narrowed and jaws dropped.
When they asked for a menu, they were told the kitchen had 'just closed'; their drinks took an eternity to arrive, and were served as if they were lepers; and when their backs were turned, two men feigned to strike them with their billiards cues.
Ordinarily, visitors are welcomed warmly in Your Sports Bar in the mining city of Donetsk, Ukraine, particularly if they are English.
Thugs: Ukranian hooligans at a match between Dynamo Kiev and Shaktar Donetsk in 2011
Its walls are adorned with the scarves of Premier League teams and a huge flag of St George is pinned to the ceiling.
Though Innocent Uche, 23, wore an England shirt with a Three Lions badge, and his friend Kelvin Obi, 20, is an ardent anglophile, there was one big problem. They are Nigerian — and black.
