Racist fixations

I wish to express my disgust at allegations by Italian reporters following the very entertaining Malta-Italy World Cup match on March 26, as duly shown in The Times (March 28). These allegations of Maltese racist insults are fake, misleading and actually seem to border on certain typically anti-southern attitudes of mind prevalent in Italy.

I was sitting in the enclosure with a number of friends and I did not hear a single insult against Mario Balotelli or anyone. On the contrary, when Balotelli was replaced, we cheered his exit. A player will attract no sympathy by holding on to the ball when his opposite team is entitled to the throw-in and waiting for it, as Balotelli did, but when one of his teammates jumped over the fence to retrieve a ball for the Malta side this friendly gesture earned him a warm round of applause.

Booing is an accepted form of expressing dissent, particularly in emotionally-charged encounters and, in this case, against the player who has scored (and scored again) against your team.

It is intriguing to note how abysmally ignorant or misdirected certain Italian reporters showed themselves to be. This in an island which has been exposed to so much hurt because of Anglo-Italian relations (not to mention the Italian bombing raids) and to the more recent sometimes blatant misrepresentations of heroic search and rescue ventures by the Maltese armed forces in the face of mass illegal immigration to our shores. This in spite of Malta holding the record per capita both in the ratio of numbers hosted as well as in that of the cases granted protection.

Many of those barracking loyally for Malta at the stadium on March 26 were otherwise fans of Italian teams, irrespective of the skin colour of some of their players. Is it too much to expect even Italian sports reporters to recognise that?

Mindless or false newspaper comments can induce needless and misplaced acrimony, as when the Maltese players had once been derogatively dismissed as “waiters” by a leading English newspaper before a Malta-England match, in which the score by half-time stood at 0-0, hence the ensuing chorus of chants. Having said that, respectfully to observe national anthems in silence, even before a football match, should be a given.