February 17, 2015: Chelsea's Racist Fans vs. Paris' Black Fans

"You've got to be carefully taught"

February 17, 2015: Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea play to a 1-1 draw at Parc des Princes in Paris, France, in the 1st Leg of the Round of 16 of the UEFA Champions League. The game was not especially remarkable. What happened afterward was.

Being a Chelsea fan isn't as easy as their 2003-onward success makes it look. It depends on when someone became a fan. Up until their 1970 FA Cup win, they were the team closest to London's theater district, the West End, so they were considered the team of actors, other theater people, and effete intellectuals. The rise of gay rights activism in the 1970s led to bigots, and other people who didn't like Chelsea, to call their fans "Rent Boys."

By the end of that decade, the rise of Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative Party led to right-wing activists thinking their time had come. The National Front began to oppose immigrants from South Asian, Africa and the Caribbean, including former British colonies.

And they recruited from lower-middle-class English teenagers, appealing to their grievances. The football grounds and nearby pubs were fertile recruiting grounds for them. Chelsea, in particular, because they were in the national capital, and didn't then have a large fanbase of black fans like Arsenal, or Jewish fans like Tottenham Hotspur, became their most popular team. And so, the stereotype of the young Chelsea fan was a neo-Nazi skinhead.

(In 2009, the English Defence League (EDL) was founded, specifically to counter the rise of Muslim immigration to Britain. They recruited among Chelsea fans, too.)

When Chelsea became successful in the mid-2000s, under the ownership of Russian energy oligarch Roman Abramovich, they got nicknamed "Chelski." They also got a lot of "gloryhunters" -- "bandwagoners," they would be called in America -- and, again, it seemed to be mostly lower-middle-class boys. These were the kind of youths who became known as "chavs." The origin of the word is in dispute: The leading theory is that it was short for "Council-Housed And Violent." A "council house" is what the British would call a housing project. And so, "Chelski" became "Chavski," and Chelsea as a club and their fans were both called "the Chavs."

John Terry played centreback for Chelsea from 1998 to 2017, and was Captain from 2001 onward. Shortly before he was named Captain, on September 12, 2001, he and his Chelsea and England teammate, midfielder Frank Lampard, were seen drunkenly insulting American tourists stuck at a hotel near Heathrow Airport, as they were unable to return home following the 9/11 attacks. Terry was also accused of stealing the girlfriend of a teammate, left back Wayne Bridge, leading to him being stripped of the captaincy of the national team after the 2010 World Cup.

In a 2011 match against another West London team, Queens Park Rangers, Terry was accused of using racist language against QPR player Anton Ferdinand. He was criminally charged, and found not guilty, but the Football Association conducted its own investigation, decided that he had used racist language, was suspended for 4 games, and given a hefty fine. He retired from national team play, reflecting the reality that he would not have been selected again anyway, as it would have tarnished the England team's image. He admitted his offense, and apologized.

But Terry's racist behavior deepened Chelsea's reputation, even as they had great success with black players such as Ghanian midfielder Michael Essien, English left back Ashley Cole, French forward Nicolas Anelka, and Ivorian forward Didier Drogba.

On February 17, 2015, Chelsea visited Paris Saint-Germain in the 1st Leg of a Round of 16 tie in the UEFA Champions League. Before the game, a train stopped at the Richelieu-Drouot station on the Paris Métro. Security footage showed Souleymane Sylla, a black Frenchman of Mauritanian descent, trying to board the train, and being pushed off by a Chelsea fan. And a few Chelsea fans started chanting, to the tune of "I Will Follow Him," the 1963 Number 1 hit by Little Peggy March which has been adapted for many English football chants:

We're racist!

We're racist!

We're racist!

And that's the way we like it!

We like it!

We like it!

The game ended in a 1-1 draw, and was not especially interesting. The return leg was played at Stamford Bridge in London, and it ended 2-2 after extra time. PSG advanced on away goals, and lost in the Quarterfinals to FC Barcelona, which went on to win the tournament. Both Chelsea and PSG went on to win their respective domestic leagues.

Things got worse. The following season, on September 16, 2015, freelance soccer writer Simon Rowntree reported the following on Twitter, during Chelsea's Champions League match with the defending champions of Israel, Maccabi Tel Aviv:

I am at Stamford Bridge and I can hear Chelsea fans singing "We will, we will gas you" along with other anti-semitic chants (1/2)

and making hissing noises towards the direction of the Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters. This is simply disgusting. (2/2)

As I have previously said, this just shows what utter SCUM Chelsea supporters are. These animals belong to EDL rallies, not football grounds

On January 3, 2017, 4 Chelsea fans from the Paris Métro incident, who had been accused of "aggravated violence," were given suspended one-year sentences by a French court. One was Richard Barklie, a 52-year-old former policeman, who should have known better. The other 3 were younger: Joshua Parsons, 22; James Fairbairn, 25; and William Simpson, 27. They were also ordered to pay Sylla 10,000 euros in compensation, and banned from Chelsea home matches.

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February 17, 2015 was a Tuesday. There was 1 other Champions League match that day: Shakhtar Donetsik and Bayern Munich played to a 0-0 draw. The game was played at Arena Lviv in Lviv, Ukraine, because Russia had invaded and occupied Shakhtar's home city of Donetsk.

Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA was in its All-Star Break. There were 7 games in the NHL:

* The New York Islanders beat the Carolina Hurricanes, 4-1 at the PNC Arena (now the Lenovo Center) in Raleigh, North Carolina.

* The New Jersey Devils beat the Buffalo Sabres, 2-1 in a shootout at the Prudential Center.

* The Columbus Blue Jackets beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 5-2 at the Wells Fargo Center (now the Xfinity Mobile Arena) in Philadelphia.

* The Nashville Predators beat the San Jose Sharks 5-1 at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville.

* The Florida Panthers beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-2 at the Air Canada Centre (now the Scotiabank Arena) in Toronto.

* The Washington Capitals beat the Pittsburgh Penguins 3-1 at the PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh.

* And the Dallas Stars beat the St. Louis Blues, 4-1 at the Scottrade Center (now the Enterprise Center) in St. Louis.

February 8, 1993: Alice in Chains, Nazi In Pains

February 8, 1993: Layne Staley of the rock band Alice in Chains punches an audience member at a concert in Stockholm, Sweden.

He deserved it. He was a neo-Nazi.

Alice in Chains were formed in Seattle in 1987, and became part of the city's hard-rock "grunge" music scene. Lead guitarist Jerry Cantrell and rhythm guitarist Layne Staley traded lead vocals, Mike Starr played bass guitar, and Sean Kinney played drums. As grunge became popular in 1990, they rose with local bands Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Mudhoney.

On February 8, 1993, "AiC" were playing Cirkus, a venue in Stockholm, Sweden, when Staley saw a neo-Nazi skinhead in the audience, harassing other fans and performing Fascist salutes. Toward the end of the song "It Ain't Like That," Staley noticed the man, stopped the performance, and had security bring him up on stage.

As soon as the man was on stage, Staley punched and slapped him, before instructing security to throw him off the stage. Following the altercation, Staley yelled into the microphone, "Fucking Nazis die!"

The man reported Staley to the Swedish police. However, when police investigated, they found the man had been harassing others, and his own brother defended the band's actions. The authorities praised Staley and released him immediately.

For the record: Sweden stayed neutral during World War II, and Nazi Germany left them alone. That was not the case with the rest of Scandinavia: Norway and Denmark resisted, and the Nazis invaded and took over before the Allies kicked them out; Iceland was part of a union with Denmark, declaring independence during the war and opposing the Nazis; and Finland fought the Soviet Union, so the Nazis treated them as allies.

Staley became addicted to drugs, as did his girlfriend, Demri Parrott. In 1996, she died of an overdose. Emotionally, he never recovered. After attending the 1997 Grammy Awards with his bandmates, he rarely appeared in public again, and followed her in 2002. Starr also died from an overdose, in 2011. As of February 8, 2022, Cantrell and Kinney are still alive, touring as Alice in Chains with Mike DuVall, formerly of No Walls on rhythm guitar; and Mike Inez, who previously worked with Ozzy Osbourne, on bass.

Cirkus, a 1,650-seat theater, opened on the island of Djurgården in Stockholm in 1892. It is still in operation.

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February 8, 1993 was a Monday. Baseball and football were out of season. There were 4 games in the NBA:

* The New York Knicks beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 120-115 in overtime at The Spectrum in Philadelphia. Patrick Ewing scored 40 points.

* The Washington Bullets beat the Houston Rockets, 106-100 at The Summit in Houston. It's now the Central Campus of televangelist Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church.

* The Utah Jazz beat the Orlando Magic, 108-96 at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.

* And the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Dallas Mavericks, 108-100 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.

And there were 4 games in the NHL:

* The New Jersey Devils beat their arch-rivals, the New York Rangers, 5-4 at the Brendan Byrne Arena at the Meadowlands.

* The St. Louis Blues beat the Hartford Whalers, 3-1. This was the 2nd season of a 2-year experiment in which the NHL played several neutral-site games, in a search for cities for expansion franchises. But this game was at the Peoria Civic Center in Peoria, Illinois. It was a sellout: 9,013 seats.

* The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Boston Bruins, 4-0 -- at The Omni in Atlanta. Attendance: 12,572. Not a good sign, given that both teams were good at the time. Nevertheless, the Atlanta Thrashers debuted in 1999, once Atlanta got a new arena. They lasted 12 seasons.

* And the Ottawa Senators beat the Buffalo Sabres, 4-2 at the Ottawa Civic Centre (now the TD Place Arena).