Firminho Racism Allegation

[Toby Gymshorts]

Somehow I doubt it.

[G-Man]

You'll get no argument from me about how the club handled it. But there were 2 or 3 threads that ended up with people screaming past each other, completely convinced they were correct in every detail. It nearly broke this place.
I mean fuck, one fuking moron even suggested faux-innocently that the Hillsborough memorial flame on the shirt was a burning cross a-la the KKK. When it stoops to that level of deliberately inflammatory fuckwittery, you can see how I'd like us to be a bit more grown up and non adversarial so as not to ruin what is at present a pretty good place.

I cannot imagine that such a comment, if stated as a fact, would have gone unchallenged even by people who carry no brief for Liverpool. I do recall seeing something along those lines somewhere as some kind of gag; maybe it was repeated here? Again, I should think that the consensus here would have been to shut down that kind of crap pretty harshly. I think that would happen now as well.

But crap like that was not the substance of the Suarez threads. The major substance was whether Suarez acted like a racist or was indeed a racist, or whether he was a misunderstood soul who expressed himself in a racially neutral linguistic culture. One can see how frustrations can set in. The Suarez case seemed a bit more clear-cut than the present case, though.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Well it made Hobbes Wander off for a bit at the time, so It was obviously pretty offensive. I don't have any memory of seeing it and suspect that I would have had a few things to say about it if I had It's an utterly mental and terrible thing to say.

As for previous journeys down this road, I was watching the match in question in the Supergrasses flat on cable st, with garcia, it was the worst game of football any of us had seen since the last time the two clubs played each other, we went for a hangover clearing walk around london, and then that evening heard that evra had accused suarez of racially abusing him, and we basically agreed that this sounded like a wind up that had gone really badly wrong. it's a situation that even suarez's mother could easily imagine. It helps that at that point literally every time the camera fell on suarez he was spitting venomous abuse at someone. So you could definitely see it happen

this i just can't get my head around at all. This makes even less sense than the craze for sleeve tattoos, or giving zlatan ibrahimovic a new contract last summer. But again this wouldn't even be in the top 20 crazy news stories of this, the weekend of the stable genius.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

I've never been to South America. So I am interested, Sam or someone who has, would a latino from there "naturally" launch into the n-word in the way Suarez did and Firmino seems to have done, as instinctively as many kids from England would likely use the "p-bomb" against anyone asian if that's how they'd been brought up?

[hobbes]

Well it made Hobbes Wander off for a bit at the time, so It was obviously pretty offensive

I suspect the thread got zapped given I can't find it. It definitely wasn't on the original thread, but on one that got polluted by the prevailing mood at the time. Likewise with someone imagining that Steve G made jokes about Glen Johnson's Penis to justify Johnson's support of Suarez (bullying/Stockholm syndrome sort of thing I didn't really follow the logic of) and when it was pointed out that there was no basis to think that, basically argued that it definitely happened.
It was a strange and annoying time.

[steveeeeeeeee]

I've never been to South America. So I am interested, Sam or someone who has, would a latino from there "naturally" launch into the n-word in the way Suarez did and Firmino seems to have done, as instinctively as many kids from England would likely use the "p-bomb" against anyone asian if that's how they'd been brought up?

I'm probably going down 'nam here, but the key insult for me in the Suarez situation was the patronising use of the diminutive "ito". It just sounds like a childish argument that was blown out of proportion, the type of stuff I have to deal with at school.

From my experience, older Portuguese people can occasionally fall into the trap of saying "n****r" because negro is a more acceptable way to refer to the colour of people of African origin, whereas "Preta" is the equivalent of "n****r", so to describe someone as "black" can be a difficult obstacle to overcome for some Portuguese speakers. If Suarez would have called Suarez "Pretinha" the incident would have evolved from stupid lazy racism to verbally aggressive racism, imo.

Firmino's response was fairly straight up. If he was going to call him something seriously offensive in Portuguese he could have done so, but he went with the most common angry insult there is, one Holgate, like most people, are aware of. I got the impression Holgate's main shock was that Firmino looked like he was going to spit when shouting Puta, but didn't and Holgate visibly flinches at that moment. I just think he was embarrassed about giving away the penalty and then flinching when Firmino confronted him.

White, European descendent Brazilians have a bad reputation for racism, but Firmino to my eyes looks like your classic Brazilian, working-class mix of ethnicity and races. In fact, a young Firmino looks a bit like Holgate himself:

[ad hoc]

I've never been to South America. So I am interested, Sam or someone who has, would a latino from there "naturally" launch into the n-word in the way Suarez did and Firmino seems to have done, as instinctively as many kids from England would likely use the "p-bomb" against anyone asian if that's how they'd been brought up?

The allegation is that the English word was used (in this case, not the Suarez case)

[Incandenza]

I've never been to South America. So I am interested, Sam or someone who has, would a latino from there "naturally" launch into the n-word in the way Suarez did and Firmino seems to have done, as instinctively as many kids from England would likely use the "p-bomb" against anyone asian if that's how they'd been brought up?

You're asking someone to give a definitive answer about how everyone from an entire continent would act. Some people there probably would use racist language, some wouldn't.

[Wouter D]

In Sam we trust.

[Bored Of Education]

I didn't see the original game or footage since so don't have much to add but I do agree with Hobbes' original post (that sounds odd) and was intrigued by two reactions I saw on Facebook. One said:

you can’t treat another player so badly physically and then cry if he verbally insults you

To which I had to point out that there is a massive chasm between verbally insulting someone and racially insulting someone. However, you know, we all know that.

From the same person (and others in a similar vein), there was this

we do also know that South Americans footballers have a bad track record as racists

You know, which is just as racist.

So, you know, we are in the era of the stupid.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Whatever happened, the ref couldn't be in a better place to hear it. even if he does seem to be completely caught up in the moment.

two things immediately leap out the first is the sudden look of surprise on holgate's face, and the other thing is the lack of reaction on the refs face. there's a big gap between the two. This could get rather messy.

[hobbes]

Aye. Although Kenny and Lallana were right there too and the ref was looking at Firmino. If something was said between "filho de Puta" and Holgate reacting (blocked from camera by Kenny's head) it can't have been much more than one word, maybe two.
My guess is it was misheard by Holgate, who took a second to process what he thought he heard. Needs proper investigation though. Like I said, the ref has done exactly the right thing.

[hobbes]

Tell you what though, I bet Holgate is not having a nice time of it right now, poor kid. The Internet be full of idiots.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The thing is though hobbes, i don't think the ref ever really looks at firmino. I think he's' considerably more worried that this is going to turn into a typical "Merseyside derby shoving, hold-me-back-and-let-me-at-him posture explosion." and is getting ready to rugby tackle the third man in. fortunately the third and fourth man in are trying to calm everything down, and hold back their teammate. God alone knows what he can actually hear out there.

In situations like that, I find myself really wondering how referees manage at all.

[Bootleg Mark Chapman]

Holgate has deleted his Twitter account since Friday, people were retweeting some old tweets of his that contained homophobic language.

[Sam]

I'm flattered, but I've never been to Brazil (bar a few hours in Foz do Iguaçu and a couple of airport transfers), so I'll defer this one to cantagalo or one of my mates bixu or Savastano, both of whom are very infrequent posters here who probably won't ever see this thread, but are Brazilian so can provide much better context if they do happen to.

[Bootleg Mark Chapman]

Aye. Although Kenny and Lallana were right there too and the ref was looking at Firmino. If something was said between "filho de Puta" and Holgate reacting (blocked from camera by Kenny's head) it can't have been much more than one word, maybe two.
My guess is it was misheard by Holgate, who took a second to process what he thought he heard. Needs proper investigation though. Like I said, the ref has done exactly the right thing.

The ref did exactly the right thing. He went and reported Holgate's allegation to the 4th official, and obviously this is where the FA comes in. The Mirror were reporting on Friday night that Holgate had misunderstood what Firmino had said and the record had been set straight at half time:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/footba...score-11801822

Though how true that is remains to be seen. I'm sure the investigation will bring everything out in the open.

[Ray de Galles]

The Mirror were reporting on Friday night that Holgate had misunderstood what Firmino had said and the record had been set straight at half time:

They don’t report that in the link you provided, merely speculating that “It may have all been a misunderstanding...”

[Bootleg Mark Chapman]

They don’t report that in the link you provided, merely speculating that “It may have all been a misunderstanding...”

Sorry, i meant to provide a screenshot, but I'm not quite sure how to do it. This is from lower down in the article:

Holgate clearly thought he had been insulted by the Brazilian, and suggested it had been a racist comment, but in fact he misheard, with Firmino clearly using a Portuguese phrase which basically called him a “crazy mother******”.

The matter seemed to have been settled at half time when Everton’s backroom staff cleared up the misunderstanding with their defender, and that set up a wonderful tie, when Gylfi Sigurdsson equalised James Milner’s opening penalty.

[cantagalo]

I'm flattered, but I've never been to Brazil (bar a few hours in Foz do Iguaçu and a couple of airport transfers), so I'll defer this one to cantagalo or one of my mates bixu or Savastano, both of whom are very infrequent posters here who probably won't ever see this thread, but are Brazilian so can provide much better context if they do happen to.

From my Portuguese lipreading, it looked like Firmino said ‘Você tá louco. Você tá louco. Filho da puta’, which, given what had just happened to him, seemed a quite reasonable response. Whether there were further words hidden from the camera, I don’t know.

Preto/a is often used like brother/sister and negão when referring to a big black guy can be a term of endearment. However, as a white gringo I steer clear of using such terms unless I know the person well. Steveeeeee is correct that the addition of the diminutive can make them demeaning.

The default term of racist abuse for Brazilian (and many other South American) footballers is ‘macaco’ (monkey) and no Brazilian is in any doubt about how inflammatory that is.

[Ray de Galles]

Sorry, i meant to provide a screenshot, but I'm not quite sure how to do it. This is from lower down in the article:

Holgate clearly thought he had been insulted by the Brazilian, and suggested it had been a racist comment, but in fact he misheard, with Firmino clearly using a Portuguese phrase which basically called him a “crazy mother******”.

The matter seemed to have been settled at half time when Everton’s backroom staff cleared up the misunderstanding with their defender, and that set up a wonderful tie, when Gylfi Sigurdsson equalised James Milner’s opening penalty.

Ah, I didn't realise there was a contemporaneous "play-by-play" report below.

Interesting but not sure it squares with the reports that Holgate spoke to the referee again after the game about the incident and the possibility that Firmino said something else to Holgate after the "puta" comment.

I wonder what the Mirror's source was about this discussion with Everton's backroom staff at half time, I've not seen it mentioned elsewhere.

[Bootleg Mark Chapman]

Ah, I didn't realise there was a contemporaneous "play-by-play" report below.

Interesting but not sure it squares with the reports that Holgate spoke to the referee again after the game about the incident and the possibility that Firmino said something else to Holgate after the "puta" comment.

I wonder what the Mirror's source was about this discussion with Everton's backroom staff at half time, I've not seen it mentioned elsewhere.

Yeah, I haven't seen it anywhere else, and surely if it was sorted at half time, there'd be no need for an investigation.

[denishurley]

I'm perplexed as to how people get Firmino's name wrong, with a 'y' sound before the last letter, like Mourinho or Coutinho - a lot of commentators/analysts do so but this thread is the first time I've seen written.

[Janik]

Most people don't actually read the letters that make up a word or name. What they do is have a quick scan to try and recognise the overall pattern, and then fit the pattern to a sound combination already logged in their memory. So a Brazilian with a Brazilian-looking name gets called something with a Brazilian style of sound. Even if that isn't how his name is written. The miss-spellings on this thread are that process then happening again in reverse - people have heard the name said and are trying to render it, based on the sound and again their knowledge of typical constructions.

I get this a lot with my own surname. It is actually pretty easy for any anglophone to pronounce (nearly) correctly if they just say the letters. However because it is fairly long (13 letters) and basically unfamiliar even in chunks that can be stitched together, I'm very used to people trying to read it out and stumbling, stopping and then getting a look of panic in their eyes.

[hobbes]

Sorry about that Mr Zalambdodonts.