Not in Serbia they wont. What you have to understand and please don't think I'm condoneing what has happened, but Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro and the like are light years behind Western Europe when it comes to multiculturism. The African, Carribbean, Asian, Indian Subcontinent and chinese, oriental cultures have barely touched central and eastern europe and the population of those cultures in these countries numbers less than a home gate for a first round tie in the Johnstone Paint Cup for at least half a dozen countries if not more. You can wander around Belgrade for example (and I have) and not see a black, brown or yellow face at all. If you do (and I didn't) it is no different than seeing a white face in rural China or India. And I might add you would get pretty much the same response which would be mild bewilderment and curiousity. See something different and you are going to stare and be a little curious, its human nature.
Ok, before you all or at least some of you start raining down on me about the shocking scenes on Tuesday lets take a look at what you are dealing with here. As I have written above, Serbia doesn't understand multicultuism mainly because of a lack of immigration from other countries outside of Europe and especially the areas of the world I have already highlighted above. I don't know why the old Yugoslavia wasn't high on the list of favorite destinations for immigrants, I might hazzard a guess at the weather, political situation, employment prospects and certainly more recently, what sort of benefits might be available but it has never seemed to attract a huge influx of immigrants looking for that better life we are so often told they are looking for. So seeing a black face, as it was for people in the late 50's early 60's in Britain,was an alien thing to them and not what they would normally expect to see in there, so to speak, backyard.
Like it or not and as much as we in the west of Europe now agree and accept that it's wrong, monkey chants and maybe chucking the odd banana isn't thought of as being racist as we now consider it to be. Be honest, and I hope you can be here, back in the 70's and 80's (for you who can remember that far back) were you really ever offended at monkey chants at black players unless of course they were playing for your team. Did you really care a jot if it offended the player? Can any of you really say you lost a moments sleep over the North Bank singing 'You Black B******' or jumping up and down like demented gibbons when Luther Blisset fouled one of ours or scored against us. For a couple of seasons we had more black players than any other clubs in the country but the racist chants (what we now consider rightly to be racist now) still rang out around The Hall, I don't hear much condemnation of that on this matter now.
The Balkan states aren't used to black or brown faces and skin tones and lets be brutally honest here, their football fans are only copying what we as football supporters were doing 25/30 years ago. The FA and Kick Racisim Out of Football will tell you that it still exsists in the modern game today but we seem to be getting outraged at what happened last Tuesday when we were doing the very same not so many years ago. Yes, yes, I know it kicked off at the end of the game and the crux of the arguement and abuse seems to be based on the treatment of Danny Rose. I have no doubt he was abused with racial intent and I dont blame him in the least for reacting, he is only human and it was a natural and justifiable reaction although is anyone really surprised that UEFA and the idiot FIFA president Blatter can't see any further than the end of their nose if they think his reaction was unsporting and vulgar in an inappropriate way. 30 years ago he might have been told to ignore it but in these enlightened times we live in I would have been more surprised if he hadn't have reacted. Personally I thought he was mimicking them as if to say 'Is that the best you can do' and giving it back with a monkey chant of his own to show he wasn't bothered (although I would bet he was hurting inside but was man and brave enough to not show it) fair play to the lad. But really, have we not seen punch-ups on the pitch before and actually egged them on? Come on, who never wanted Dave Cusack or Roy McDonough to give rough justice on occassion, did anyone really care when Pat Scully sent the Bury player into orbit, who felt the urge to be Outraged of Westcliff and write to the papers, we all like a bit of blood lust when it suits.
I agree, the racist stuff is outdated, wrong, has no place in sport let alone football, it shouldn't have happened, UEFA and FIFA should take action, blah, blah, blah, but what this really doesn't need is people jumping on the holier than thou bandwagon and making out we are whiter than white when it comes to this sort of thing. We were world beaters at racisim and fisticuffs not that long ago and I'm talking about the players as much as the fans here. Punish Serbia if that makes everyone happy but it wont address the problem and it certainly wont stop it. Try looking at their way of life, especially the male football supporting type. Passionate, loyal, diehard, over excitable, got a few beers in them, getting carried away, err, just like us. The only difference is we have been used to black faces for 50ish years, they haven't.
