By Chris Wright
Flying in the face of the empirical evidence presented to them, CSKA Moscow have denied that their fans taunted Man City midfielder Yaya Toure with monkey chants during the Champions League tie between the two sides last night.
Toure complained about the “stupid” racist chants after the game, but CSKA’s deputy media manager, Michael Sanadze, has since appeared on Sky Sports News to assure everybody that “nothing special happened” and that the Ivorian behemoth probably just imagined the taunts:
“There is no subject to discuss. Nothing special happened. There was a lot of noise in the stadium. Nobody else, other than Yaya Toure, heard anything.
“The only trouble that has come about was because Yaya Toure heard something.”
So, there you go. There’s only a problem with racist chanting if/when the targeted players hear them and so, by extension, all of football’s inherent racism woes could therefore be solved if all non-white players were simply issued with ear plugs before each game. Easy as peas.
You’ve got to admit: those are some pretty impressive denial-based mental gymnastics Sanadze is performing there.
This sounds like a job for Rioveggia…