Our players can’t do anything more than they have done in the past two or three years in trying to get the right messages out, take the right stands, and it’s for other people to protect them. It’s for me to protect them in the main, but for the authorities to protect them as well.
“They shouldn’t have to be subjected to any form of racism. There’s a balance in the crowd. As we know at home not everybody causes problems. Tonight our anthem was really respected remarkably well.
“It’s not fair to criticise all the Hungarian fans. A lot were very generous and behaved extremely well. The individuals that are responsible need to be dealt with. I think there’s some evidence that people have been filmed and we’ve got to hope the authorities deal with that in the right way.”
England were booed by a section of their own supporters for taking the knee before friendlies against Romania and Austria at the Riverside Stadium in June. Southgate was asked whether last night’s abuse shows why his side have continued to perform the anti-racism gesture.
“They recognise the world is changing,” he said. “Although some people are stuck in their way of thinking and prejudices, they are going to be the dinosaurs in the end. The world is modernising. Hungary isn’t anywhere near as diverse as our population. It’s taken us a long time to get to where we need to get to. We’ll continue to try to set the right example for young people in our country.”
we’re talking about actual overt face to face racist abuse and threats in a football stadium and not a couple of tweets from an anonymous bot account here. I think we can definitely “pontificate” about that.
