As Croatian fans showed, racism is rampant in soccer

	A handful of despicable fans are giving Croatia supporters a bad name. Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images
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Sitting near the top of my enormous books-to-read pile, which now is about 200 deep, is a copy of How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, by Franklin Foer. Even though I'm still only halfway through Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch, maybe it's time I pick up the former and flip through it to try to understand how racism has become so disgustingly pervasive in soccer matches worldwide.

The latest offenders are a group of Croatian fans who stood together at an August match to form a human swastika. In other words, they make Raiders fans look like Royals fans. If the Croatians are excessively abusive to the black players on England's team in this week's match, the Croatian national team could be booted from the 2008 European Championship.

UEFA's William Gaillard told Mark Irwin of Great Britain's The Sun, "We won't tolerate racism. We have had many problems with this in Eastern Europe before, and Croatia have been among the worst offenders.... We are determined this will not happen again and will send out a strong message to stop any incidents during the game against England. FIFA have recently introduced new rules which can, in extreme cases, lead to a team being docked points or even being excluded from the competition. Because of the problems we have encountered with Croatian teams in the past, they have been warned future sanctions will be much heavier than any which have been imposed for previous incidents."

At the '04 European Championship in Portugal, Croatia fans shouted racist chants and displayed white-supremacist banners, heaping so much abuse upon French players that the nation's soccer federation was fined. And the Croatians aren't alone. Similar sanctions have been leveled against Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria and clubs in Rome.

How did it get to this point? Certainly Kick it Out, the anti-racism group, should be commended for its endeavoring to promote equality -- "Let's kick racism out of football," goes the slogan -- but that group was founded in 1993. Do these fans really need more than a decade to figure this out?

While it's inarguable that most of Europe, especially Eastern Europe, is more fractured and fractious than here in the States, at what point did fans get together and decide, "You know what? Here's a great idea: Instead of just booing, let's put up a swastika banner. That'll show 'em!"? Hundreds, if not thousands, went along with this -- and, unfortunately, now appear to be going on with this. A question that seriously needs to be asked is whether genuine racists are using soccer to promote hatred or if these soccer fans just have no creativity whatsoever when it comes to jeering the opposing side.

Can you imagine this taking place in America? Consider if instead of showing up with a syringe-themed banner to taunt Barry Bonds, someone spray-painted a bedsheet with the N-bomb? That fan would be run out of the stadium, if not by security then by surrounding fans. It would be ridiculous to say that racism is 100 percent eliminated from American sports -- i.e. Rush Limbaugh's take on Donovan McNabb -- but these soccer matches bring to mind what Jackie Robinson went through more than 50 years ago.

As someone who caught a debilitating case of World Cup fever -- aided mightily by TiVo, the sports fan's best friend -- and got totally swept up by "the beautiful game," it's a shame to see it tarnished so. And it's odd when memories of drunken Philly fans chucking snowballs at opposing coaches seem almost passé.

Justin Doom can be reached at sidoomsday@yahoo.com.