It has become a standard question to Gareth Southgate before visits to countries in what we used to call Eastern Europe. Usually with good reason.
What about the racism? What will we do? This time, though, it was different because Southgate wasn’t having it.
The England manager knew what was coming once his team got to Hungary. Once they took the lead in Thursday night’s game, it arrived and it was abhorrent. It is to be hoped FIFA deal with it strongly.
The Three Lions players tackled racist abuse during their 4-0 win over Hungary on Thursday
More broadly, though, Southgate is not prepared to allow the dreadful failings of other countries to mask the issues that continue to afflict us at home. Not after what he saw this summer.
The 51-year-old is no longer prepared to buy into the lame insinuation that we are somehow more civilised than other countries, that we are somehow better and so therefore in a position to moralise.
‘We have our own problems and we need to sort ourselves out first,’ he said before last week’s game in Budapest.
The England manager, like all of us who were there, remembers what happened at Wembley on the night of the Euro 2020 final.
He knows how bad it was and is not prepared to forget and move on. And that is just as well because not everybody is so keen to dwell on it.
The failings of other countries to mask the issues that continue to afflict us at home
In an interview in The Times recently, Oliver Dowden, the secretary of state for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, was asked whether what happened would hamper our bid to host the 2030 World Cup.
‘Fifa understands that we (must) learn those lessons,’ he replied. ‘There were particular peculiarities about that night, so I’m confident it’s not done us long-term damage.’
Long-term damage? Parents who arrived for that game with their children, only to turn tail and flee, their night ruined, would probably be able to tell Dowden something about the collateral impact.
Peculiarities? Well, England were in a final. So, yes, that was odd. But far too much of what occurred in and around Wembley as England reached the latter stages of the tournament was grimly familiar.
This problem, so deeply embedded, is not something that can be talked away with a sweep of a politician’s hand. The sense of arrogance, entitlement and selfishness that breeds this behaviour is ingrained in England’s football culture.
If FIFA are really to be assured that the Government and
