Slavia Prague v. Glasgow Rangers: Lessons from a Football Match

‘Why should we kneel? We’re not England, who colonized half the world and carries the burden of slavery stemming from its history. We need not apologize to anyone.’ So said a fan of the Czech soccer champions, Slavia Prague. He was commenting on Slavia's refusal to kneel before their match against London's Arsenal, on 8 April 2021. A few days earlier, an irate Polish commentator demanded, ‘Let Russian and German footballers kneel before Poles, to ask their forgiveness!’ Piotr Lisiewicz added that while ‘the British had colonies, Poles were in Russian and German servitude’. His reference was to a game that pitted Poland against England. In both matches, the English side took the knee as a gesture in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Athletes were especially honouring the memory of George Floyd, the Black American murdered the year before by a white Minneapolis policeman. (The symbolic gesture dates back to 2016, with American football player Colin Kaepernick taking the knee during the playing of the US national anthem.) Previously, the Czechs had no problem kneeling also. In fact, the Czech national team had knelt during the anthems when they faced the Scottish nationals just a few months earlier, on 14 October 2020. But something had changed drastically on 18 March, when Prague Slavia beat Glasgow Rangers 2– 0, on the Scottish team's own turf. Tensions were high at the Ibrox Stadium. The winner was to proceed into the quarter finals of the Europa Cup. As they have many times, Rangers had recently again qualified as Scottish champions, and had not lost a game at home for a year. At least to their own fans, they were the favourites. But Slavia came to Glasgow after a streak of 18 games without a loss, and could not be easily written off. Fourteen minutes into the game, Slavia's forward Peter Oliyanka, a Black player from Nigeria, scored a header that travelled over the Rangers’ defence into goalie McGregor's net. The Scottish team was frustrated by several missed scoring opportunities. They fumed that the referee refused to call a penalty when, as the Scots saw it, Slavia's Abdallah Sima (also a Black footballer) committed a serious foul. After the break, at minute 61, Glasgow's Kemar Roofe attempted to kick a high ball and the Czech goalie, Ondřej Kolář, jumped to catch it.

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