In the past couple of days, all everyone talked about was football. It was everywhere — from speculations about PCR tests and possible lineups to it being the number one cause for insomnia. And then the anticipated final happened and Ahly fans were thrilled and guess what?
We’re still talking about football. Except that instead of talking about anything fun, we’re discussing its ugly side. The side that usually involves Shikabala — and, yes, this is the side that needs to end right now.
As you may have known, Shikabala has been a victim of sinister racism ever since, well, ever since he decided to strap on his football boots.
Most recently, it’d gotten to the point where fans of opposing teams even went on the internet to doubt if Shikabala’s son was a legitimate child because of complexion difference. Yeah, it went that far.
But no one would know, it’d go even further. See, before the match, there’d been a surge in “El-Mar7oom Shikabala” jokes because a number of people believed that he was past his prime football years…and after it, some Ahly fans took it further than that and went to Shikabala’s family cemetery to ‘pray for him’.
Let us rephrase that. A group of people actively trespassed on a cemetery for A JOKE. And, no, sadly, it didn’t end there.
To add more fuel to the fire of racism, some people went so far as to dress a dog in Shikabala’s jersey and you can let your imagination run wild with the insinuation. Literally, all of this happened just to ‘stick it to the losing team‘.
And here’s the sad thing — we know a number of people won’t mind this. Sadder still, we know that others might defend this kind of behavior because it’s all in the name of football rivalry.
You know, as in football rivalry excuses racism and a general lack of humanity and respect for the dead. And, because this apparently needs to be said, it doesn’t and it never will.
FYI, no one’s being unrealistic here. No one said football rivalry and all the jokes at the expense of the losing team had to end — all anyone’s saying here — all anyone’s been saying since Shikabala has been getting this godawful treatment — was that it should never include racism and general apathy for the living.
It’s not that hard to be a decent human being and we know, just like everyone else does, that racism and acts like the ones that followed the CAF Final are not and will never be okay.
And before anyone says it — it’s never okay for both sides and no one has ever excused the monkey jokes made by Zamalek fans at the expense of a then-playing Mo’men Zakaria.
Discrimination is always horrible and we should stop it from being this associated with sports and cheering like it currently is. Literally, the base requirement is decency.
