New spot to air during Champions league games

Any doubt that there is still a racism problem in Europe was confirmed by Emile Heskey’s treatment in Zagreb on Wedensday, and UEFA have now responded with a new anti-racism television advert, which will air at half time in every Champions League game this season. Well, they say it is ‘new’, but it was actually produced for Euro 2008.

On the surface, the video is just a bunch of fans cheering, but European Commissioner for multilingualism Leonard Orban is quick to point out how deep it is maaaan:

“A feeling of common belonging based on linguistic and cultural diversity is a powerful antidote against intolerance,” he said. “By increasing mutual understanding, multilingualism can significantly contribute to the dialogue between people, be it at school, at work or during free time. As this 30-second TV spot shows, football is a good vehicle for interaction and for learning about other cultures and languages.”

So much insensitivity, so little time…

Spain’s Olympic basketball and tennis teams are no strangers to pulling offensive gestures for the camera, and Argentina’s ladies football team have now contributed to the International Athletes’ Photobook of ‘Slit-Eye’ Face-Pulling.

The picture above was published in Argentinean newspaper Ole two weeks ago, and was taken long before the Spanish decided to hamper their 2016 Olympic bid.

The world needn’t worry about any repeat incident from the Argentine ladies, however, as they lost every single

Please guys, you’re just embarrassing yourselves

A few days ago, Spain’s Basketball team highlighted their nation’s ‘poor record for racial sensitivity’ by posing with slit-eye gestures for an advert in a Spanish newspaper. Yesterday, Jose Calderon told us the photo was ‘appropriate’ and the rest of the world is ‘absolutely confused’, and now The Telegraph have discovered the photo above on the Spanish Tennis Federation’s website.

The snap, running with the caption “we are prepared for China” on the Spanish website, includes female tennis players Llagostera Vives, Medina Garrigue and Suarez-Navarro - all of whom are competing in Beijing. It was taken ahead of a Federation Cup match against China in April.

Have you seen any other pictures like this? Are you an insensitive Spaniard not scared of being exposed online? Send us your snaps here, folks.

Offensive photo was “appropriate”, says Olympian

You folks out there in interwebland have been going batshit crazy for the story about Spain’s ‘Chinese wink’ team photo (300+ comments so far), and it seems most of you have been waiting for an apology from the Spaniards for a few days. Instead, however, they have been protesting their innocence - Spanish NBA star Jose Calderon wrote on his website:

Clearly, most of us are ‘absolutely confused’. The whole ‘some of my best friends are Asian’ excuse is a popular choice

Basketball team find subtle way to offend their hosts

Spain (the country whose national manager referred to Thierry Henry as a ‘black shit’, whose fans greeted the England team with monkey chants and whose Formula One supporters found their own special way of welcoming Lewis Hamilton) have enhanced their reputation as world leaders in the field of racism by making ’slit-eyed’ gestures prior to participating in the Beijing basketball tournament.

Clearly, Spanish marketing executives believe the best way to promote good and services is through overt discrimination, as the snap above is actually part of an advertisement for a courier company. The posed faux-pas enjoyed a full-page in Spanish sport daily Marca, and according to The Guardian, no one involved in the advert believed it to be offensive, and they did not consider it inappropriate in light of their bid for the Olympiad in 2016 or 2020.

The north/ further north divide in France has never been more apparent

Everyone in the UK has been getting their knickers in a twist about the lack of respect shown by fans and officials in football, but we are not the only country dealing with controversy in the game.

Paris Saint-Germain fans kicked up a storm by unfurling a huge banner reading ‘Paedophiles, Unemployed, Inbreeding, Welcome to the North’, during a cup game with Lens on Saturday. The message mimics the name of a film currently out in France, and the Parisians were deemed to have gone too far in insulting their friends from the north (slightly further north than them, that is).

French football chief Frederic Thiriez has promised to lay the smackdown on the ‘imbeciles’ who marred the Coupe de la Ligue final, and much like Gordon Brown wading into the respect debate in today’s papers (”Footballers have a greater responsibility than anyone else to set the right example for young people,” he says - that should do the trick), French President Nicolas Sarkozy - who

Richard Williams conquers prejudice with even more prejudice

Richard Williams, a man famous only for producing two talented daughters, was deemed worthy of interview last week. The old timer used it as an opportunity to thoroughly embarrass his offspring:

Tennis is a prejudice game. Well, I’m Black and I’m prejudiced, very prejudiced. I’ll be always prejudiced as the White man. The White man hated me all my life and I hate him. That’s no secret. I’m not even an American, it just so happens that I was born in America. People are prejudiced in tennis. I don’t think Venus or Serena was ever accepted by tennis. They never will be. But if you get some little White no good trasher in America like Tracy Austin or Chris Evert who cannot hit the ball, they will claim this is great.

After displaying the kind of racism that would make the actor who played Kramer in Seinfeld proud, Williams went on to criticise

Discriminatory Facebooking has put Mrs Marc Bircham under scrutiny

Hate-monger Danielle Lloyd has just about managed to drag herself clear of the racism row of Celebrity Big Brother, but now another WAG appears to have fallen into the bigotry fray. Thirty-four-year-old Jadene Bircham, wife of semi-Canadian Yeovil midfielder Marc, has appeared in the red tops this week for joining a Facebook group called: “”If you don’t like England then f**k off back to where you came from!” Topics in the group, which has now been closed, included ‘Does anyone find Muslim females attractive?’ and ‘Black ethnic groups are more likely to be criminal’. Jadene has defended herself with the following statement:

“I’m not going to lie to you, I read it and thought it would be quite funny but I didn’t even bother having a good look at it. I do agree that if you come to this country and you don’t like it, then fair enough, you shouldn’t be here. I’m going to be leaving the group, I didn’t realise what was on there.”