IN the space of 17 days, Birmingham team-mates Troy Deeney and Neil Etheridge have been victims of racial abuse from fans at English football grounds.And, yes, you can check the dateline at the top of this story, the year is 2023.
The recent experiences of Neil Etheridge and Troy Deeney show how much work still has to be done to curb racism in footballCredit: Roland Leon Sun Commissioned
Birmingham team-mates Etheridge and Deeney are speaking outCredit: Roland Leon Sun Commissioned
Britain has been a multicultural society for decades and its national sport has been surrounded by anti-racism campaigns, slogans and gestures for several years, too.
Yet here we are, discussing the serious impact on two experienced, “thick-skinned” pro footballers who suffered vile racial slurs from the terraces.
In this interview, Birmingham captain Deeney and keeper Etheridge describe feelings of degradation, worthlessness, numbness — even shame — after they were victims of sickening slurs on the basis of their ethnic origin.
A high-profile black man, Deeney suffers dozens of instances of racism every week — mostly online, but occasionally in person.
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And, most recently, from a supporter of his own club after Tuesday’s 2-0 home defeat by Cardiff.
Etheridge is half-Asian — his father is white British, his mother Filipino.
Other than one incident at school in an “affluent, white area that wasn’t multicultural”, he had never suffered racial abuse until the dying moments of a 2-2 FA Cup draw at Blackburn Rovers on January 28.
When I asked Deeney whether he wanted to write about Tuesday’s incident at St Andrew’s in his weekly SunSport column, he suggested that Etheridge joined our conversation.
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It felt like I’d been stabbed with a hot knife in an area of my body I didn’t even know I had. You feel numb, degraded, worthless.Neil Etheridge
Deeney suggested some people might be tired of hearing him “banging on about racism again”. It’s sad he fears such attitudes, but perhaps he is right.
He felt Etheridge might offer a different perspective. To prove racism wasn’t exclusively a “black issue” and also to hear how it felt to be racially abused from the terraces for the first time.
Recalling the incident, Etheridge says: “We scored a last-minute equaliser at Ewood Park, I’d celebrated by the halfway line and, as I walked back towards the goal, I heard the normal sort of abuse you get used to.
“Then, all of a sudden, there was a person standing out in the crowd and it got very nasty. He was saying, ‘You f***ing Chinese p***k’.
“He then pulled his face back to give the impression he had ‘Chinese’ eyes, as people might say. I was really taken aback.
“It felt like I’d been stabbed with a hot knife in an area of my body I didn’t even know I had.
“You feel completely numb, completely degraded and worthless, which is a really weird sensation. It cuts you deep.
“Mentally, it’s affecting you. Then you start questioning yourself.
“When the police spoke to me, I’m thinking, ‘Has this really happened?’ Although the CCTV footage made it pretty damned clear it had.
“I reported it to the referee, he dealt with it well and the FA got involved. The police found the culprit.
“The culprit has admitted the offence. It was a 15-year-old.
“The kid said he didn’t believe it was racist — that is what we are dealing with, a complete lack of education and understanding. That’s why we both wanted to speak . . . ”
Striker Deeney reported abuse as Birmingham lost 2-0 at home to Cardiff in the Championship on TuesdayCredit: Rex
Deeney intervenes: “You’re not going to offend me, mate, we have discussed this . . . the idea of a ‘black agenda’, as if racism is solely a black issue.”
“That’s what I mean,” says Etheridge. “There are fewer Asian people in English football — as a half-Asian player, it’s not being talked about, then people can say “it [anti-Asian discrimination] isn’t racist, is it?”
As for Tuesday’s incident, Deeney explains: “I’d come on 15 minutes from time, at 0-0, and Cardiff scored two late goals.
“At the final whistle, we go around the pitch and clap — win, lose or draw.
“Then we came to the tunnel, it’s the kids and disabled area, and you often hear, ‘Troy, can I have your shirt?’
“In this instance, I’m hearing swearing and abuse aimed at everyone. Then I spot this guy on the concourse.
“He is leaning over, we’ve made eye contact, and it is, ‘You black c***, you f***ing n*****’. I asked, ‘What did you say?’ and he repeated it. I’m like, ‘Wow, you really don’t give a f*** do you?’”
I ask Deeney how this made him feel. I apologise if the question sounds trite but, as a white man with no experience of suffering racism, I want him to differentiate between this experience and that of an angry fan shouting abuse without racial connotations.
Deeney says: “You know what? My first thought on Tuesday was to question myself, almost as if I’m trying to justify what he’s said. I’m asking, ‘I wasn’t that bad was I?’
“Then the rage comes. And after that, I can only describe it as shame. You feel embarrassed. You feel ‘less than’.
“You end up looking at yourself, thinking, ‘Am I what I thought I was?’
Deeney and Etheridge revealed the distress caused by racismCredit: Roland Leon Sun Commissioned
“You have to be a bit arrogant to be a professional footballer. But I’m asking, ‘Am I actually good at football or just what this bloke says I am?’
“You build a tolerance to being called a c*** or fat or s**t or rubbish.
“I’ve been called every single word about my footballing ability, I’m used to it and I will wear it. But if you have to go racial and cultural, I’ll never understand that. I am a big-headed, fat c***, I don’t care, but when it was racial . . . ”
Etheridge intervenes: “I discussed it with my old man and he said ‘uneducated people’.
“But those guys at Chelsea who abused Raheem Sterling a few years ago, who can afford to buy tickets for Chelsea v Man City, I’m guessing, but they might not be that uneducated.
“I didn’t fully understand until it happened to me. Until you have been through it, you can’t. I want to make sure it doesn’t happen to the next generation of players.
“I’m 33, if that happened to a 21-year-old, they might not be able to control themselves to go to the ref . . . it’s not an easy process.
“I can only imagine what those lads went through being abused after the Euros final — Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho — it’s a complete mindf***.”
I’ve been called every single word about my footballing ability, I’m used to it and I will wear it. But if you have to go racial and cultural, I’ll never understand that.Troy Deeney
Deeney says: “Neil has been around racism but until it specifically hits you, you really can’t comprehend that shameful feeling.
“It’s not that we are ashamed to be black or Asian, of our heritage, it’s the way people can make you feel ‘less than’. No one has any control over what colour they are.”
Etheridge agrees: “As senior players we have thick skins, we’ve played at the highest level in front of big crowds.
“You gain a certain tolerance to abuse but when you are being abused racially, you just can’t imagine how degrading it is for one human being to say those things to another.”
Deeney believes racial abuse is part of a wider feeling of “entitlement” among football supporters.
He says: “We’ve created a herd mentality. As soon as you go through the turnstiles there are no rules, no respect, a feeling of entitlement, ‘I pay my money and can do what I want’.
“You’re a Chinese p***k, you’re a black c***, in the street or at work people are aware they can’t say this stuff.”
Etheridge says: “It’s like the other night at Arsenal with Kevin De Bruyne, the same herd mentality. People chucking missiles.”
“Yes, I was at the Arsenal-City game,” says Deeney, “Nowhere else in life would you see someone launch a bottle and get 15 more people saying, ‘That’s a good idea, I’ll lob a bottle, too’.
Kevin de Bruyne had bottles thrown at him by Arsenal fans, but hit back by winking at the perpetrators as Man City won 3-1
“But if Kevin launches one back, he’s in the wrong. If Neil goes into the crowd and grabs the kid at Blackburn, the FA would be on him like a ton of bricks.”
On the evening of the Blackburn game, Etheridge was scrolling through Twitter.
He says: “A woman who’d been at the game had written, ‘This is what he thinks of that crybaby Birmingham goalkeeper’. And then there is a video of, presumably, her son, no older than ten.
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“He’s shouting, ‘You s**t b*****d’. And yeah, OK, that’s football. But she is now using it as a trophy that her ten-year-old son is saying that, on the back of me being a ‘crybaby’ for reporting racial abuse.
“So when we talk about education, well education is clearly not coming from that kid’s home . . . ” More
