FFS: Zenit's largest fan group write open letter to owners

The letter is disgraceful

Can we have Hulk back then

Why is it disgraceful and why is all of Russia all of a sudden not deserving of hosting a world cup? This is a group of fans not the majority. The club does not have to even take them seriously. They are sharing their point of you through a letter even stating they are not racist. Based on that they cannot be held accountable of wrong doing. We all may disagree with them but generalizing a country and club or even city based on one group of fans doesn't make you guys any better then these fans. Whether you like it or not it's true!!!!

white_star wrote:Why is it disgraceful and why is all of Russia all of a sudden not deserving of hosting a world cup? This is a group of fans not the majority. The club does not have to even take them seriously. They are sharing their point of you through a letter even stating they are not racist. Based on that they cannot be held accountable of wrong doing. We all may disagree with them but generalizing a country and club or even city based on one group of fans doesn't make you guys any better then these fans. Whether you like it or not it's true!!!!

. Guess you have a point. And I know not everyone thinks like that.

Oblige them


(and give us Witsel on loan).

When you start anything with "We arent racist but"....im thinking yes, yes you are racist.

Disgraceful club which I have no time for. If Witsel and Hulk an ounce of pride and werent money whores they would leave this pathetic excuse of a club. Bruno Alves too.

Comparing it to Bilbao is just ridiculous, I duno where to begin.

Tradition

The Franchise wrote:When you start anything with "We arent racist but"....im thinking yes, yes you are racist.

Disgraceful club which I have no time for. If Witsel and Hulk an ounce of pride and werent money whores they would leave this pathetic excuse of a club. Bruno Alves too.

Comparing it to Bilbao is just ridiculous, I duno where to begin.

Tradition

You as a mod I would think you would be smarter then generalizing but I guess not. Please read the article and you will notice a group of supporters on their not the club writing the letter. You aren't any better then the fans when you are labeling a club for its fans.

white_star wrote:Why is it disgraceful and why is all of Russia all of a sudden not deserving of hosting a world cup? This is a group of fans not the majority. The club does not have to even take them seriously. They are sharing their point of you through a letter even stating they are not racist. Based on that they cannot be held accountable of wrong doing. We all may disagree with them but generalizing a country and club or even city based on one group of fans doesn't make you guys any better then these fans. Whether you like it or not it's true!!!!

i wont talk about russia or russia deserving the world cup because thats a completely separate issue but as far as zenit goes their 'largest group of fans' addressed a letter to the club saying they basically dont want non-eastern europeans. that certainly has racist/xenophobic connotations.

and why cant they be held accountable for what they say? of course they can, everyone is held accountable for what they say.

and concerning the fans, they are the 'largest fan group.' thats significant imo. the fans represent a large portion of a club, they pay to see the team play, and the team wants to give the fans what the fans want. it heavily influences club.

This guy plays for Bilbao, how is it the same?



Anyways you just know that comment is coming when they started as "We're not racist, but..."

I agree that the entire Russia should not be condemned for this, and just the Zenit ultras that letter claims to represent. There are idiots everywhere. And in ultras they're commonplace.

"We're not racists, and for us, we see the absence of black players at Zenit as an important tradition.."

this line particularly shocking.. "were not racists" oh but the absence of black players is AN IMPORTANT TRADITION

thats tradition? and an important one? what a disgrace.

white_star wrote:

The Franchise wrote:When you start anything with "We arent racist but"....im thinking yes, yes you are racist.

Disgraceful club which I have no time for. If Witsel and Hulk an ounce of pride and werent money whores they would leave this pathetic excuse of a club. Bruno Alves too.

Comparing it to Bilbao is just ridiculous, I duno where to begin.

Tradition

You as a mod I would think you would be smarter then generalizing but I guess not. Please read the article and you will notice a group of supporters on their not the club writing the letter. You aren't any better then the fans when you are labeling a club for its fans.

Really? Im not better than a group of racist? Who agrees with that?

Anyway, your missing the point. The fans are the club, without the fans there is no club.

white_star wrote:Why is it disgraceful and why is all of Russia all of a sudden not deserving of hosting a world cup? This is a group of fans not the majority. The club does not have to even take them seriously. They are sharing their point of you through a letter even stating they are not racist. Based on that they cannot be held accountable of wrong doing. We all may disagree with them but generalizing a country and club or even city based on one group of fans doesn't make you guys any better then these fans. Whether you like it or not it's true!!!!

90% of fans polled on pro-Zenit forums agreed with the letter (source: http://rt.com/sport/football/zenit-fans-african-gay-184/), and this is being issued by their largest fan group. A homemade bomb was found with Hulk's face on it, and M'Vila refused to move to the club after receiving death threats. I would never accuse someone of being a racist on an individual level simply because I heard they're a Zenit fan or a Russian or from St. Petersberg, but labeling these fan groups and this letter as racist is not a stretch.

Also, stating you're not racist does not mean you're not racist. Case in point: "White Star is Polish, and therefore is an angry racist who's probably poor. But I'm not racist." Maybe read the content of the article before discussing it, especially if you're going to call people ignorant on this issue.

Actually, maybe you should stop posting about racism in general. You're entitled to your views, but seeing as how wrong they are, you might want to stop embarrassing yourself.

sportsczy wrote:

stevieg8 wrote:Article I read mentioned death threats disrupting M'Vila's move this past summer... Because it's not about racism or skin color, they just want Russians/Europeans. And M'Vila's definitely not French.

It's not about racism at all.

You serious?

Well I was being sarcastic, but yeah, M'Vila did get death threats. Which kinda debunks their whole "it's not racist, it's just about culture" thing... According to their logic, they should be equally accepting of a dark-skinned European, because the cultures are similar even if the skin tone is not - they even specify Western Europe as being OK.

white_star wrote:

vanDEEZ wrote:

white_star wrote:LOL I see some people don't understand what these fans are trying to say but I'm not surprised.

then what are they trying to say?

why even put in that kinda statement without explaining?

Because I am not an encyclopedia read what it says! Everyone jumps the gun on racism without thinking about it.

Explain, how is this NOT racism?

"For us, the absence of black players in Zenit is an important tradition and nothing more.”

If you believe that this is NOT racism, then you are either very deluded into actually believing it or a racist yourself.

So um yeah we understand this is football and racism doesn't belong here.
So this isn't racism. So hear us out.


We never had black people on our team. So keep it that way.

Da faq? There's no two ways around it. It's discrimination borderline rasict.


Am I left or am I right?
Don't answer that.

I love how this is, at it's very best, a homophobic and xenophobic rant that suggests the club to illegally discriminate future employers. And that communism thing that literally tore the nation apart? Lets bring it back because who likes profits anyways? Not the Zenit ultras it seems.

Zenit needs to speak out loudly against all of this, if they don't they are complicit and will just go against White Stars point on not everybody being racists.

This is disgrace ....

This is a disgrace and white star's defence is ridiculous.

We're not racists,

but we at Zenit consider the tradition of racism a very important one. Therefore, we only accept people who are arbitrarily close to our culture. As most people can relate to, team work is so much easier when everyone speaks the same language and people aren't black in the face. For these reasons, we hope you are as open to our proposition as we are to you.

PS: And please no gays!

By the way... the club isn't racist obviously. But the largest portion of its fans are given this letter and some of its local players have proven to be. If the city has any self-respect, important political figures including the mayor should have publicly expressed outrage at this... but i have heard of no such reaction; or at least, it hasn't been reported.

In fact, there should be nationwide outrage at this letter in Russia... but nothing as far as I can tell. It's a bit scary tbh.

In other words...

Zenit fans: We're not racist, but don't buy black players. It's not that we don't like black players. We just like white players more. Why? Because it's tradition.

Translation: We are racist. We don't hate black players, but we prefer white players... and to be fair some of us just hate black players too. Why? Our perverted sense of nationalism can't deal with globalisation ushering in an era of multicultural club teams. We are very, very sad people.

Not racist eh?

Just a quick question to see what people think..

Would anyone be just as up in arms if a team stated they only want black and gay players?

Im sure the general view would be 'good on that club for looking out for gays and dark skinned people' but that would be equally racist and discriminative.

Just my opinion but if 90% of Zenit fans want only white straight people in that club why not just let them have thier way? does it effect anyone else? aslong as they dont start abusing black players when they play against them. im sure theres 100's of other clubs that would accept the homosexual black players so why let it bother you?

Im all for equality and stuff but if a team doesnt want black player why go there and apply to play?

not stickinng up for them in any way but i just donty see why people wont just let them have thier way aslong as they dont harm anyone.

Cassius_Case wrote:Just a quick question to see what people think..

Would anyone be just as up in arms if a team stated they only want black and gay players?

Im sure the general view would be 'good on that club for looking out for gays and dark skinned people' but that would be equally racist and discriminative.

Just my opinion but if 90% of Zenit fans want only white straight people in that club why not just let them have thier way? does it effect anyone else? aslong as they dont start abusing black players when they play against them. im sure theres 100's of other clubs that would accept the homosexual black players so why let it bother you?

Im all for equality and stuff but if a team doesnt want black player why go there and apply to play?

not stickinng up for them in any way but i just donty see why people wont just let them have thier way aslong as they dont harm anyone.

That would also be racist. If you exclude someone for the sole reason of their belonging to a certain set, then you must have a prejudice against members of that set.

but the question was, would as many people be conndemning it? i dont think they would tbh.

sportsczy wrote:http://www.goal.com/en/news/553/russia/2012/12/17/3609586/zenit-supporters-group-warns-against-buying-black-or-gay?source=breakingnews

"We're not racists but we see the absence of black players at Zenit as an important tradition," the letter, which was also posted on the fan club's website, read.

"It would allow Zenit to maintain the national identity of the club, which is the symbol of St Petersburg. We only want players from other brotherly Slav nations, such as Ukraine and Belarus as well as from the Baltic states and Scandinavia.

"We have the same mentality and historical and cultural background as these nations."

The letter also called for the club to reject "sexual minorities".

What the *bleep* is this, Its obvious they don't want black players in their club. Their tradition is based on racism ffs.

Even if they arent racist, The have put it forward in way in which the racism is blatant.

Cassius_Case wrote:but the question was, would as many people be conndemning it? i dont think they would tbh.

Probably not as many. Hard to say why really.

Maybe because white people and straight people are not usually the victims of racism when compared to gay people or black people.

Maybe because Heterosexual and white people are less likely to be racially/sexually abused, then, they'll also be less used to standing up to it.

I don't know really.