Manchester United: Romelu Lukaku chant is ‘racist’ — Kick It Out
Kick It Out campaign have stepped up their plea to Manchester United to ask their fans to halt the singing of a new viral ‘racist’ chant sung referencing the Belgian striker’s penis size.
With the football season well underway and the Premier League clubs spending reaching the staggering heights of £1.4bn, a summer transfer record, there are plenty of new faces at the clubs.
It is indeed common place for the fans to welcome their new star summer signings with personalised chants. Such a the Liverpool fans for example welcoming new fan favourite winger Mohamed Salah with his very own song.
To the catchy rhythm of the 1996 classic Ocean Colour Scene’s hit ‘The Day We Caught The Train’, the Reds supporters will bellow out the name of the £36.9million pound Egyptian.
However fans chants have continually pushed the boundaries, another recent example is the Chelsea fan’s celebrating their Spainish Summer signing Alvaro Morata with an anti-semtic chant, which in fairness Chelsea were quick to address.
There is seemingly a strong conflict amongst the fans and the representatives of the Manchester club in the condemning of the song, as mentioned in the BBC Sport article Kick It Out having condemned the “offensive and discriminatory” song, however the fans, key characters to this narrative have somewhat refused.
The heavy reinforcing of the clubs stance on the song and in turn the direct singing response from the fans during their away trip in the setting of Southampton's St Mary’s Stadium “We’re Man United, we’ll sing what we want” is somewhat disheartening. There is consistent physical movement within this narrative from pitch side to the boardrooms of Kick It Out and Manchester United, and another worrying setting of the 2018 Russia World Cup, where there has been many stories and concerns of the fan relations be that amongst themselves a ‘festival of violence’ supposedly shall be awaiting…
or even in direct relation to players possibly the most important characters of this narrative, the players, the likes of Romelu Lukaku should be setting the tournament alight being cheered for his skill, and prowess in front of goal not a long standing racial stereotype.
Clifford Stott within the article demonstrates mimesis, from Aristotle, translated as ‘showing’, and the drama on the stage shows us directly the actions and speech of the characters.(Fulton, 2005) He does this in an attempt to address the crowds, (a key character) behavioural actions in their stage of the football ground.
“Football fans have always chanted in a way that is sometimes on the edge,” “This is another example of it. I suspect that it will rapidly die away.
“I think a lot of fans who sang it had no racist intent and don’t see it as racist — they see it as funny.
“It is a chant that is racist and Manchester United fans need to face up to that fact.
“It does perpetuate a racist stereotype and I don’t think it’s a chant that is going to survive for any great length of time because people are realising that fact.”
I must raise the question “Will this all work?” With the mentioning of police monitoring the fans ensuring this song is not sung, will it work as a successful deterrent or just generate more fan fare amongst the song, will the song “die away” like Clifford Scott referred to.
I’m intrigued to discover how much power the fans believe their words hold, and how their singing can in turn affect the players and other spectators further key characters psychologically.
