Bengaluru FC – Mumbai City FC Racism row: Full story

by Chittu Shetty November 21, 2017

A Facebook page came up with a post stating MCFC player Emana getting racially abused by BFC fans giving rise to a racism debate in the social media

Fan’s enjoy during match 4 of the Hero Indian Super League between Bengaluru FC and Mumbai City FC held at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium, Bangalore India on the 19th November 2017
Photo by: Sandeep Shetty / ISL / SPORTZPICS

Racism in football has always existed despite best efforts from the FIFA and other governing body, Fans have been often known to cross the line to get under opposition skin sometimes getting ugly with their attempt.

On Sunday, a Facebook page accused West Block Blues – the Bengaluru FC fan group for chanting racial remarks during Bengaluru FC vs Mumbai City FC game against Mumbai player Emana. The post got immediately shared over various football groups across social media. But fans were quick to question the authenticity of the post as neither Mumbai City Staff nor Players had issued any complaints or shown any kind of dissatisfaction. Instead Mumbai Coach Guimaraes and star defender Lucian Goian had appreciated the fans stating, “Any player would love to play in this atmosphere.”

However soon after another Facebook post screenshot was shared all over again in which a Bengaluru supporter accepted that the incident occurred but still the entire story was not cleared to everyone.

Apparently bunch of new fans chanted “Raggi Mudda” towards Emana after he fouled a BFC player. Raggi Mudda is a popular Karnataka staple food, which are hard and dark in colour. The Chant went on for around 10 seconds and was about to grow but was stopped immediately by the BFC regulars for being inappropriate and that was the end of it. Another incident involving Amrinder Singh occurred, with the Mumbai custodian receiving some offensive remarks from the new fans, who didn’t knew ‘Amrinder was formerly BFC’ for time wasting early in the game which was once again shot down by other regulars. It should be noted that earlier in the day, Amrinder was given rasping welcome by West Block Blues during the warm up with ‘No Pajji, No Party’ chants.

Also Read: Bengaluru FC vs Mumbai City FC Player Ratings: How did the players fare

While the abusive chants towards opposition team has occurred before from West Block Blues, which could be termed as ‘questionable’ action from outsider’s point of view. The racism chant was something that came unexpected even for west block blues regulars.

But the fact is it was not endorsed, a chant that could have taken seconds to fill the whole stadium was immediately shut off for being irrational and inappropriate. This is something to be lauded as the fans showed maturity to not give this kind of behaviour any wind. But in the world of Social media there is very little you can control. The post that blamed the west Block blues got shared all over the internet inviting hates from everyone but the truth is that racism chants was controlled and shut by WBB themselves.

The fact is fans needs to grow up, the line between a healthy rivalry and ugly rivalry is very thin and often fans are known to cross the line in the moment of aggression which should be best avoided. India is not new to racism and has faced a fair share of it abroad but another bitter truth is we are also known to be racists among ourselves and have been taken the latter point very lightly. But the beautiful game of football doesn’t need it. Racism should not be entertained by any means and while there is always a bad apple present in whole basket one should not allow it to spoil others.

-Writer’s Opinion

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