As you’re probably aware by this point, Rangers and Slavia Prague are not very fond of each other.
Back in April, Slavia star Ondrej Kudela was banned for ten games for racially abusing Rangers midfielder Glen Kamara after the two sides met in the Europa League, something the Czech side disagreed with considerably.
The whole incident created plenty of bad blood, so Rangers are not very well thought of back in Czech Republic.
Therefore, the meeting between Rangers and Sparta Prague last night was not only a highly anticipated one but one in which trouble was almost inevitable.
That appears to have been the case, with Sparta, who were under a stadium ban, filling their ground with 10,000 schoolchildren for the Rangers match, but the racism seemingly not going away.
It’s a sad state of affairs, but one with the Czech media are ignoring, instead electing to accuse Rangers of making things up.
iDNES cover the game and the reaction afterwards and state that Rangers ‘saw racism’ where there was only ‘expressions of discontent’ from the children in the audience.
They first cover comments from Sparta’s Dávid Hancko and their coach Pavel Vrba, who were gushing about having children in the stadium.
They then turn to Rangers ‘the other side, the losing side’ and take a dig at Steven Gerrard, who they accuse of changing his opinion on the children in the stadium after the game having said he was ‘glad’ it wasn’t an empty stadium beforehand.
As far as they’re concerned, the fans only ‘made it clear that Kamara was unpopular’, and there was no racism towards the Rangers player.
While there was ‘displeasure’ every time Rangers and Kamara had the ball, there was ‘no booing, no imitation of monkey shouts’, which they say are the obvious ‘expressions of racism’.
Even when Kamara was sent off, all he was treated to was ‘cheers from the crowd’. But with regards to racism, ‘there was none’. Children aged six to 14 simply aren’t capable of it in their eyes.
We’ll leave it up to you to decide on that front, but anyone hoping for some sort of humility from the Czech media will be sorely disappointed as it appears lessons have simply not been learned. In fact, they’ve been wholly ignored.
