Hats off to Eto´o...

Racists are so ignorant. I don´t think I can´t come up with a word that describes what I feel when I encounter acts of racism. Obviously there´s never an appropiate time to act in a racist manner, but racism in sports is something I will never comprehend.

As a football fan I often see and hear horrible stuff said to opposing players. Racism in football is nowhere near being erradicated. Amazing countries and societies like the Spanish and Italian unfortunately have a lot of racist fans. By a lot I don´t mean that in every stadium there are TONS of crazy racist people, what I mean is that if you add the small number of racist fans that attend matches the number is still disgusting and exponentially higher than it should be in our time.It´s a shame that a small number of stupid and ignorant people can ruin the whole game.

Today I saw on TV something that shocked me. In the Barcelona vs Zaragoza match, the Cameroon born Samuel Eto´o, one of the best forwards in the game, was constantly verbally abused by the Zaragoza crowd. Oddly enough, and this is a perfect example of how dumb these racists are, that they would abuse black players, even when their team has more than one... it´s just ridiculous. Anyways, Barca had a corner kick and when it was about to be taken Samuel rushed over to the sideline expressing he refused to keep playing since the abuse was sooooooo bad. These guys are professionals and they are more than used to getting abused. Often you see BANANAS being thrown at black players and monkey chants can be heard around, simply pathetic.

Most people would say that he should walk off the pitch, and I agree but others would say that if he did that, then the racists would have won, and accomplish what they set out to do. Eto´o was almost gone when the ref and even opposing players convinced him to stay. And what followed left me speechless.

Right after play resumed, Barcelona got a penalty and Ronaldinho scored. He went to celebrate with Eto´o and all the team, from Swedish, Dutch, Brazilian, Spanish to Portuguese players all hugged and celebrated FOR Samuel. That was incredible. Then, a fewminutes later Eto´o got a through ball and ou could hear all the noises from the crowd, Nazi salutes and all, and he ran and ran, and made the best of crosses so another black player, swedish Henrik Larsson, could score. That was incredible, i could swear they were almost crying, like they won the world cup or something, just beautiful and inspiring. Black dutch manager Frank Rijkaard has never looked happier, not even when he played for milan and won the Champions League.

I just wanted to express the respect I have for Eto´o for having the guts to play on under such horrific conditions. Noone deserves that treatment, no one, I don´t care which team you are on. Also Ronaldinho and Larsson were massive but the whitest player of all Mark Van Bommel celebrated more than anybody and was the first one to run after them... much respect.

Now, how stupid do those fans feel now that the ¨inferior¨ blacks totally killed their team??

How about them apples???

Peace