Racist insults infiltrate French soccer stadium

Jerome Pugmire

PARIS — Warming up on the touchline, a black player jogs toward fans at the Parc des Princes soccer stadium. As he gets closer, a barrage of monkey chants explodes — “OOOH! OOOH! OOOH!” — and racist insults fill the air.

Such scenes are increasingly common at the home stadium for Paris Saint-Germain, one of France’s top soccer teams, and are finding expression in elite soccer leagues across Europe — from Italy’s Serie A to Spain’s La Liga.

Many of the fans yelling insults are members of hooligan gangs that prowl the stadium grounds on match day, looking for a rumble with black and Arab members of a multiethnic rival gang.

Interviews with gang members and repeated visits to the stadium for PSG games found that racist hooligans operate openly and with almost total impunity at the 43,000-seat ground that hosted some matches during the 1998 World Cup, which France won with a team dominated by players from former colonies in Africa.

Amid concern that the upcoming World Cup in Germany will become a magnet for extreme-right thugs from around Europe, the seething ethnic hatred and beer-fueled ethnic brawls at Parc des Princes are a chilling reminder of how the “beautiful game” still manages to draw out the ugliest in human nature.

And as France undergoes a bout of soul-searching following rioting in heavily immigrant suburbs last fall, the violence is a sign that some disaffected youths may be finding an outlet for racial tensions at the soccer stadium. The brawling soccer fans are the extreme fringe of a deeply troubled France — one that is grappling with stiffening resistance to immigration, protests linked to youth unemployment and the perceived threat of globalization.

The curious thing about the clashes outside Parc des Princes is that unlike among soccer hooligans elsewhere in Europe, they are largely between rival groups of fans rooting for the same team — PSG.

At Parc des Princes, PSG supporters divide along racial lines in two opposing sections of stands — the Kop of Boulogne behind one goal and the Tribune d’Auteuil behind the other.

Boulogne is nearly entirely Caucasian; Auteuil is multiracial and includes whites.

Two all-white hooligan groups — the Independents and the Casual Firm — have fought with increasing ferocity in recent months with the multiethnic group, called Tigris Mystic.

The race issue comes out clearly in interviews with gang members on both sides, none of whom agree to be identified by name because they have records and fear more trouble with police.

One leading member of the Independents proudly recently recounted how his finger got bent out of shape during a pre-match brawl outside the Parc des Princes.

“I pinned this guy over a car and went to punch him,” said the young man, dressed in a designer overcoat. “He moved his head and my hand smashed into the bonnet. It never healed properly.”

The man said his gang was out to rid the suburbs of blacks and Arabs.

A high-ranking member of the Tigris Mystic said his group is fighting back against such “fascist” views.

“We’ve had enough of being knocked around,” said the 23-year-old man of North African descent.

The Tigris headquarters is based in the French suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis, one of the centers of the violence that engulfed Paris suburbs last year. Casual Firm hooligans wielding iron bars vandalized the Tigris headquarters in October, just days before the rioting broke out.

Violence reached new heights on Feb. 25 when Tigris Mystic members, some allegedly armed with machetes and nail-studded planks of wood, ambushed 20 Independents at a highway service station on their way back from a match. Five people were injured, including one with severed ligaments in his arm.

PSG, where black players George Weah of Liberia and Ronaldinho of Brazil once displayed their magic, is not alone in suffering from racist outrages.

In Spain, Barcelona’s Cameroon striker Samuel Eto’o threatened to walk off the field after Zaragoza fans subjected him to monkey chants in February. In Italy, right-wing fans have displayed Nazi and fascist symbols and anti-Semitic banners at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico, shared by Serie A clubs Roma and Lazio.

But some black players say the atmosphere at Parc des Princes has become almost intolerably hostile.

“I’d have to think twice before setting foot there again,” France and Juventus midfielder Patrick Vieira said.

PSG insists that racists form a minority of its fans and says its powers to combat them are limited — even with 102 cameras inside its stadium, the highest number in France.

“Understand one thing: PSG has no police authority or lawmaking power,” the club’s director of communications, Jean-Philippe d’Halliville, said. “You can’t ask PSG to arrest and judge people. Things don’t work that way in France.”

But he did not condemn the presence of some former hooligans now working as stadium ushers, some of whom are on first-name terms with thugs and are able to let them in without tickets or a search.

“Even if there are former hooligans who work in the security services, are you not allowed a second chance?” D’Halliville said. “Should they bear a cross all their lives?”

Piara Power, director of the British-based Kick It Out anti-racism campaign, says PSG is “fudging the issue.”

“That’s just passing the buck,” Power said. “Denial is a big thing among football administrators. Unfortunately turning the other cheek is easier.”

Ushers did exactly that before a home game against Sochaux on Jan. 4. Two Arab youths were punched and kicked by white fans outside the entrance to the Kop de Boulogne. Ushers, all white, stood chatting and did not intervene.

During the match, PSG midfielder Vikash Dhorasoo, a France international midfielder of Indian origin, was told by a racist fan to “go sell peanuts in the metro.” It was only the least offensive shout in a tirade of vulgar epithets for blacks.

French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who hopes to be elected president next year, has promised to rid PSG of racists and hooligans. He wants troublesome fans banned from matches and he championed anti-terrorism legislation that will boost video surveillance in sports grounds.

There have been minor successes. On March 7, a Paris court convicted three PSG supporters for unfurling a racist banner at a February 2005 match in support of an anti-racism campaign headed by France and Arsenal striker Thierry Henry.

The court banned the supporters from the stadium for three years, ordering them to report to police during matches, and fined them $900-$1,200.

The Casual Firm and Independents’ name and dress code stem from an admiration of English hooligan culture. Their favored labels are Fred Perry and Lonsdale — once worn by extreme-right skinheads in England in the 1980s.

PSG’s hooligan problem seriously escalated against the backdrop of the club’s success in Europe in the 1990s. The club reached the 1995 Champions League semifinals, won the European Cup Winners Cup in 1996, and lost the final the following year.

PSG hooligans made their mark by brawling with opposing thugs from Juventus, Arsenal, Anderlecht, Glasgow Rangers, Liverpool and Bayern Munich.

In September 2004, a 150-strong PSG mob attacked around 50 Chelsea hooligans — known as the “Headhunters” — by Porte de Saint-Cloud Metro station.

The fight earned PSG’s thugs high praise on Web sites dedicated to soccer violence.

(Associated Press)