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Nicolas Anelka arrives at Roda to take over as a consultant at the Eredivisie club.
Nicolas Anelka arrives at Roda to take over as a consultant at the Eredivisie club. Photograph: Marcel van Hoorn/EPA
Nicolas Anelka arrives at Roda to take over as a consultant at the Eredivisie club. Photograph: Marcel van Hoorn/EPA

Nicolas Anelka, Roman Zozulya and clashes of football and politics in Europe

This article is more than 7 years old

Anelka’s arrival as a consultant at the Dutch club Roda has sparked controversy at a time when players in Spain and Germany have left clubs because of perceived political beliefs

The ears of the club official sharpened when, unusually, the talk near the back of the plane turned to politics. A Premier League team were flying to the south coast and a senior midfielder had begun discussing Britain’s vexed relationship with Europe when a young player behind him inquired: “What’s the EU?”

Cue considerable hilarity, along with a vague sense of relief on the official’s part that football remained a largely current affairs-free zone, somehow sealed off from the wider geo-political issues of the day.

Comforting as that impression may be, it is increasingly false. Already the English game has wrestled with the rights and wrongs of Paolo Di Canio’s appointment as Sunderland’s manager, Nicolas Anelka’s dismissal by West Bromwich Albion and Papiss Cissé’s initial refusal to wear Wonga-branded Newcastle United kit on the grounds he considered the pay-day loan company’s activities as anti-Islamic.

Further controversies are gaining traction across Europe with Anelka’s arrival as a consultant at Roda of the Eredivisie meeting with a furious reaction from Jewish leaders in the southern Netherlands.

The former France striker parted company with West Bromwich Albion after making a quenelle gesture during a Premier League game in 2013. Widely regarded as an anti-semitic act bearing more than a passing relationship to a Nazi salute, it brought Anelka a five-game ban and £80,000 fine imposed by the Football Association, although the governing body ruled he had not been promoting anti-semitism.

Anelka promptly took to social media to announce he was terminating his contract in order to preserve his “integrity” and the club sacked him for “gross misconduct”.

Opinion is now divided in Kerkrade, the small mining town which is home to Roda, with Ron van der Wieken, a local Jewish leader arguing the former Mumbai coach’s appointment was “disgraceful” and “shocking”. Meanwhile Anelka, now 37, retorted that it was all “a misunderstanding” and he has “nothing against the Jews”.

Across the border in Germany Islamic fundamentalism entered the football arena after Darmstadt of the Bundesliga parted company with their Tunisia midfielder Anis Ben-Hatira by “mutual consent” over his work with Ansaar International. A contentious Islamic aid organisation of particular interest to the security services, it reportedly has links to Germany’s ultra-orthodox Muslim Salafist community, claims which Ansaar International denies.

Anis Ben-Hatira, pictured here during his time with Eintracht Frankfurt, said he was the victim of a ‘slander campaign’ after parting company with Darmstadt. Photograph: Michael Probst/AP

The Berlin-born 28-year-old claims he is the victim of a “slander campaign” and Ben-Hatira remains adamant he had merely been involved in facilitating “humanitarian” work in Syria, Somalia, the Palestinian territories and Afghanistan.

“Darmstadt SV 98 views the private humanitarian aid Ben-Hatira offers, through the organisation he works with, as wrong,” said Darmstadt’s president, Ruediger Fritsch. “After analysing the whole situation, it no longer makes sense for both parties to keep working together. Darmstadt 98 wishes Anis Ben-Hatira, who has always behaved impeccably and exemplarily at our club, all the best for his sporting future.”

Some German commentators feel the club bowed to pressure from fans who before a recent home draw with Borussia Mönchengladbach distributed flyers and unfurled a banner demanding the player sever his links with Ansaar.

Ben-Hatira railed against his treatment. “Anyone who looks at my CV will quickly see that I am the sort who is socially involved and who fights for equal treatment between people of different skin colour, ethnicity or faith,” he wrote on Facebook. “I’m known as someone who will not be bullied or manipulated. I’m going to try to continue to help people … the real scandal is that there is now an attempt to sabotage my sports career in Germany.”

In Spain Roman Zozulya shares similar sentiments after being sent back to Real Betis only hours into a loan stint with Rayo Vallecano after some of their supporters dubbed the Ukraine striker a “neo-Nazi”.

A Madrid second-tier team, Rayo Vallecano have a radical left-wing fan base and indignant supporters turned up at Zozulya’s first, and only, training session, hurling abuse his way before chanting their city was “no place for Nazis”.

Despite Zozulya publishing an open letter denying he harboured far-right views, the club took fright and returned him to Betis. It means a forward who arrived in Seville and joined Betis from Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk late last summer, cannot play again this season as league rules prohibit players from being registered for more than two sides in a single campaign.

“Unfortunately my arrival in Spain was accompanied by a misunderstanding by a journalist who knows very little about the reality of my country,” says Zozulya, who has posed on Twitter holding a rifle and donated money, some of it the proceeds of auctioning his 2014 Europa League winners’ medal, to help support the Ukraine army in its struggle against Russia.

Rayo Vallecano fans staged a protest against Roman Zozulya, whose loan at the club was cut short but who has denied he harbours right-wing views. Photograph: Mariscal/EPA

“I arrived at Seville airport wearing a T-shirt with the badge of Ukraine. This journalist reported that I was wearing a shirt from a paramilitary group. The newspaper recognised their error and apologised. I’m not linked to any paramilitary or neo-Nazi group.”

Apparently unnerved, Miguel Torrecilla, Vallecano’s sporting director, said: “We’ve decided it’s in the best interests of the player to return to Seville. The player’s very upset, he’s scared and in no condition to do a job here.”

Back at Betis Zozulya’s team-mates have offered their unstinting support, Ukraine’s ambassador is demanding the Spanish government intervenes and lawyers suggest La Liga may yet punish Rayo Vallecano.

If that case prompts all sorts of concerns about possible “fake news”, the perils of players’ social-media portals opening unwanted windows on their worlds and the sometimes blurred margins between extremism and freedom of opinion, there was no doubt Di Canio not only had a Dux – which translates as “leader” – tattoo but had previously said he was “fascist but not racist”.

Perhaps tellingly, no one had appeared concerned by this when the former West Ham forward managed Swindon. Indeed it was not until David Miliband resigned from Sunderland’s board in protest at his appointment in 2013, and the Bishop of Durham expressed outrage, that the club’s directors realised the gravity of a situation complicated by the enduring belief of many Italians that 1920s fascism – “before Mussolini had his head turned by Hitler” – was very different from Nazism.

Eventually Di Canio denounced fascism – sort of. “I’m not political, I don’t affiliate myself to any organisation,” he said. “I’m not a racist and don’t support the ideology of fascism.”

With Sunderland’s former manager carefully camouflaging his tattoo by wearing long-sleeved tops in public, the furore swiftly blew over. Zozulya, Anelka and Ben-Hatira are discovering there is no disguising perceived political or religious sympathies highlighted by indelible digital footprints.

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