View from Brazil illustration by Kate Copeland.

A Spanish court has sentenced three Valencia football club supporters to eight months in prison and a two-year ban from stadiums for racially insulting the Brazilian player Vinícius Júnior. During a match on 21 May 2023, the Black Real Madrid player was repeatedly called a ‘monkey’, making headlines worldwide.

The verdict is a victory for Vini Jr (who led Real Madrid to win the Champions League this year) in his fight against rampant racism, but it is the bare minimum and comes too late. Initially reluctant to punish Valencia, the Spanish Football Federation eventually succumbed to mounting public pressure. Repeated failures by authorities to go after racists in the stands have made Vini Jr a habitual target of sickening abuse, with rival fans even hanging an effigy of the star from a bridge last December.

While the convictions were touted as a historic first in Spain, it is not enough to focus only on punishing fans. Clubs and federations worldwide must also be penalized for their supporters’ behaviour in the form of deducting points, suspensions or exclusions of teams, dismissals, sponsorship terminations and hefty fines.

Following the May incident, the Spanish Federation imposed a three-game partial suspension ban on Valencia’s stadium and a measly fine of €27,000 ($28,945). The small penalty means that the club’s fans continue to attack Vini Jr, and have accused him of lying about the scale of racist abuse he suffered during the match.

Such crimes, committed against the top Brazilian player abroad, are not just the fault of three individuals - but are the responsibility of a system that protects the perpetrators, allowing them to feel safe through impunity.

This issue is not confined to Europe: we also have racist and homophobic fans in Brazil who go to stadiums and make players’ lives a misery. Many athletes brush it off because they believe complaining won’t change anything. After all, many have even received nicknames based on their skin colour from coaches and teammates, reinforcing casual racism: “Petrol”, “Smoke” and “Graphite” are just some examples.

There is precedent for harsher punishments to tackle racism in football. In September 2014, the Superior Court of Sports Justice deducted points from the club Grêmio, leading to the team’s exclusion from the Brazil Cup over racist abuse by fans. The football club was also fined, and those involved in the abuse were banned from stadiums. The referee and the fourth official were suspended for not reporting the incident.

Of course, strict punishment alone does not solve the problem by decree, neither here nor in Spain or Britain. Federations, teams and supporters will still turn a blind eye or even secretly support prejudice. But it sends a message that racism and homophobia cannot and should not be tolerated.

While the ignorant may say: ‘What about my freedom of expression?’ or ‘It’s just football’, we must make it clear: the not-so-beautiful game is too big to be ‘just football’. It is a mirror of what we are as a society and a beacon of what we need to be. And when football is a stage for assaults on dignity, it is not just a specific group, but the whole society that is attacked.

Leonardo Sakamoto is a political scientist and journalist based in São Paulo. He is a campaigner with the investigative NGO Repórter Brasil, which he established in 2001.