Enzo Fernandez and Wesley Fofana bring out football’s inhibited racists

If you pause for a second to wonder whose ‘side’ you are on in the Enzo Fernandez and Wesley Fofana story then you are a reprehensible human being and most likely a racist.

If you spend one second wondering why Fofana did not keep his reaction to deplorable chanting private rather than making it public then you are a reprehensible human being and most likely a racist.

If you are a Chelsea fan whose reaction to this story was to compare the two men as footballers then you are a reprehensible human being and most likely a racist.

The uninhibited racists who flooded Fofana’s socials with despicable but entirely predictable comments are not the only villains in this piece; they are just the ones who operate in plain sight without fear of any kind of punishment. With platforms impotent on hate speech – either by choice or technology – they are free to vomit their bile across the internet.

This will not be the first time Fofana has received racist abuse online; the volume has simply got louder. No high-profile black person escapes some degree of online racism, like no high-profile woman escapes some degree of online sexism often allied with implied or flagrant threat.

We can all do po-faced moralising in their direction but it will make zero difference. It’s not like a man (and it is usually a man) who sends monkey emojis and liberally used the N word under their own name on the internet is susceptible to being persuaded that actually, racism is bad and love it see no colour.

We could rage against Fernandez and his trite apology that ticks all the boxes and raises all the red flags. We could praise Fofana for his bravery when he would have absolutely known that this would have opened the door to horrors untold. And we could laugh at Nicolas Jackson for his naivety in believing that Fernandez once speaking to a small black child proves that he is not a racist.

But all that is too easy, as is screaming into the void to the uninhibited racists. Let’s talk instead about the inhibited racists who would never describe themselves as such but who cursed Fofana for causing ructions with his post rather than Fernandez for his racism, who talked about transfer fees rather than ethics, and who have spouted nonsense about ‘cultural differences’ as if racism is not racism if it emanates from South America.

Eleven years on from Liverpool fans being derided for suddenly becoming experts in the use of the word ‘negro’ in Uruguay, and victim-blaming in the extreme with consistent, horrific abuse of Patrice Evra, it’s once again sickening to see so many football fans think of club first when the story is purely about people being horrible to people. And who amongst us believes that people should be horrible to people?

This is not about Chelsea just as that was not about Liverpool; every football club has a small minority of racists but, more worryingly, a large minority of fans who put all morals aside in the name of defending their footballer who plays for their football club. It’s utterly nonsensical because those footballers represent their football clubs largely by accident. They could just as easily represent another football club and in this parallel universe, their actions would be condemned.

No leaflet issued by Kick it Out or sponsored campaign on Sky Sports is going to rid football of racism because racism thrives in the world and football is part of that world. But if you are reading this and you are one of those people who responds to these stories with anything other than disgust at the racism and sympathy for those affected then maybe you can be saved.

Unless, of course, you’re happy being a reprehensible human idiot who is most likely a racist.