Paul Elliot: 'There's been this level of abuse in Europe for years'
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Your support makes all the difference.When I started at Charlton in the late 1970s it was the common denominator: monkey-chanting and booing. I drew great strength from adversity but the authorities then never saw it as a priority issue.
I was in Italy in 1986-89 with Pisa and I found that the biggest problem was in the less affluent south. One game, I marked Diego Maradona and tackled him – I wasn't sure if I was going to get away alive.
One of the worst games was against Roma. My family was there and they were horrified. I was more worried about my family sitting in the crowd, who said the abuse had been absolutely terrible. At least I was protected within the perimeter of the pitch.
Having travelled, I realised how big the problem was in Europe. If you looked at France, Holland and Germany, it was prevalent all over.
Playing with Pisa made me realise the universal problem with racism: the banana-throwing, the monkey-chanting and the booing. It was nasty, there was no doubt about that.
In the UK it was so dire in the 1980s that it had to get better. But it wasn't until seven or eight years after I started out that the problem was taken seriously in Britain.
One of the factors was the number of black players at all levels and the footballing authorities in England and Scotland recognised that the abuse was totally unacceptable. In Scotland there had been some attacks on black players. These racists were amongst the minority but unfortunately it was this minority that associated themselves with professional football.
Anti-racism campaigns have been far more developed in the UK than in any other country in Europe. The Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) and the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) have probably made the two biggest contributions to developing an anti-racist model, which has been adopted by all clubs.
Over here the improvement is 100 per cent but only because the leading figures in the game wanted to address it and formulate a plan from the grass roots.
However, they lack real leadership in Europe, unlike in the UK, where the message was taken to the schools and professional players went into the community.
Unfortunately, in Europe it has been at this level of abuse over the past two or three years. We've got to punish players in Europe who indulge in racist behaviour and punish their clubs if they fail to take action against them.We're looking to the governing bodies, they're the ones who set the rules.
Paul Elliott was the first black player at Pisa and then at Celtic when he returned to Britain. He is now a spokesman for the CRE and the PFA
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