A precedent. Only one. In Spain, only one professional football match has been postponed due to insults from the fans: it was the Rayo Vallecano-Albacete Segunda game played in December 2019 and had a peculiarity. One of the visiting players, Roman Zozulia, was accused of Nazism by the Vallecas crowd and his teammates decided not to play the second part. That is, it was not the referee's decision.

In 2007 Spain approved the Law against violence, racism, xenophobia and intolerance in sport, but its use has been very limited.. Years ago, in 2004, an England-Spain game at the Santiago Bernabéu ended in embarrassment due to racist chants against Cole, Wright-Phillips, Ferdinand, Defoe or Jenas, all black players, and for this reason the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero decided create a protocol to combat this scourge.

Thanks to article 15 of that Law, the referee can suspend the match or vacate the stadium, whatever he deems. He also has intermediate tools, such as the temporary suspension or the eviction of a group of people, but he has a problem: everything is in his hands.. Although he has had the help of a video assistant referee (VAR) for years, for a decision so critical, so tricky, even so risky, he is alone.. And so it is difficult to decree the postponement of the game.

In fact, in the majority of cases lived in Spain, everything has remained an anecdote: at most, a stoppage and a message over the public address system.. From Darío Silva in Oviedo in 2000 to the controversy between Diakhaby and Juan Cala last year, hardly any interruption is remembered, such as the one that took place in Gijón in 2016 due to the chants against Iñaki Williams. Is it different in other places?

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Yes and no. FIFA and UEFA have a three-step protocol against racism that is practically a carbon copy of the Spanish one: first, ask the public address system to stop the chants; second, suspend the game for a few minutes; and third, suspend the match permanently. For this reason, in national team matches or in the Champions League there have been no cancellations despite the many incidents, such as in the Montenegro-England game in 2019 or in the PSG-Basakshir game in 2020 in which the fourth official insulted Webo. But the different leagues have created their plans to try to combat the scourge.

The most different approach is found in the Premier. In England, the sole responsibility does not lie with the referee and the first step is not the messages over the public address system. With its six-step protocol, racist yelling is treated as a public order problem and, therefore, the collegiate must warn those responsible for security, who are the ones who must identify the perpetrators on site, file the complaint and expel them at the moment if they consider it.

With such an action, an attempt is made to avoid what is happening in Spain, where some complaints are archived due to difficulties in personalizing what happened and at the same time pointing to the individual, not the whole. Quite the opposite of what happens in Italy. With Balotetti as a regular victim, in Serie A racist insults have been repeated in recent years -to Lukaku in Cagliari, to Kessié in Verona, to Dalbert in Bergamo, to Koulibaly in Rome…- and there have been no stops for games either. , although there have been harsh sanctions after the fact. The most common: the closure of the stands where the ultras are usually placed.

In Spain that has never happened, in fact the partial closure of El Molinón for the grievances to Iñaki Williams in 2016 was dismissed, and most cases have been resolved without being able to identify the perpetrators or with the temporary withdrawal of the season ticket of the perpetrators.