Soccer and Racism in Italy

Last May Fiorentina fans hurled racist chants at Mario Balotelli. In an interview with CNN's Pedro Pinto, Mario says “racism makes me feel alone”.

Kevin-Prince Boateng decision to leave Milan for Schalke 04 was influenced by  racist incidents.

Here you can watch Boateng reaction to racist chants, all AC Milan players walked off the pitch and the game was suspended – a friendly match, not the Championship final, I shall notice.

The case was widely commented in the media, CNN's Amanda Davies interviewed Kevin-Prince Boateng on racism in football. Last week  in a small town near Bergamo Italian children have been withdrawn from a first-year elementary school class where they were outnumbered by non-Italian pupils. Furthermore, the first Italian black minister Cécile Kyenge was compared to an orangutan by a former government minister, likened to a prostitute by a deputy mayor; and had bananas thrown at her while making a speech.

According to Maaza Mengiste (The Guardian) Italy's racism is embedded, and the abuse of Minister Kyenge stems from the country's failure to face up to its past. These are some of the comments to the article…

WarwickC : “I don't think that Italians, as a nation, are any more or less racist than anyone else. But they don't have the same uptight politically-correct puritanism that you find in Northern nations like ours, which means they're less embarrassed to say what they think, where we tend to keep 'incorrect' thoughts to ourselves”.

External: “Do you mean that the Italians are honest while the British are hypocrites?”

Tania26:  “I genuinely disagree. I don't think our football fans, for example, desist from throwing bananas and making monkey noises because of "politically-correct uptight puritanism". I also don't think that our non-white politicians avoid racist abuse of the type faced by Kyenge because of the same. I just think that racist attitudes are far less acceptable in the UK. Look at Berlusconi's digs about Obama's nice suntan. I don't think Cameron would avoid saying such a thing purely because he's uptight but because he would see it as wrong. Ethnic minorities are far better integrated and successful in the UK than many other European countries and we have far less of an issue with the extreme right. Instead of dismissing that as merely Britons being bound by PC, we should celebrate how open minded and tolerant we are compared to places such as Italy”.

In 2008 Berlusconi called Obama  a "tanned" politician. He later defended the remark, calling it "a great compliment" and responding to a reporter's suggestion that the remark might be misunderstood, he accused his opponents of not having a sense of humour. ''God save us from imbeciles,'' he added.

Let’s end with Mario Ballottelli’s Top 10 Goals...

... and some other funny moments