Does happiness make you racist? Enzo Fernandez seems to think so.
“I apologise for getting caught up in the euphoria of our Copa America celebrations,” he wrote on X, in famed apology font Comic Sans.
By Fernandez’s logic, ecstasy-fuelled ravers should be filmed chanting “Keep ‘em out” daily. Just imagine what the Argentina squad sang after winning the World Cup if this is their response to a Copa America victory?
“That video, that moments, those words, do not reflect my beliefs or my character,” he continued, still in Comic Sans.
Whatever he says, it is remarkably difficult not to assume a wider pattern of behaviour when you are caught flawlessly reciting racist lyrics on self-filmed video with a Cheshire-Cat grin. Convincing someone you’re vegan when they’ve just watched you devour a medium-rare sirloin is harder than you might think.
This will be the challenge next time Fernandez turns up for training, faced by seven black or mixed-race French players he has racially abused to an audience of millions. Chelsea’s first-team squad includes 29 players with black heritage.
Most notably, Wesley Fofana reposted the video with the caption “Football in 2024: uninhibited racism”, while at least seven Chelsea players have unfollowed Fernandez on social media. He has reportedly apologised to his teammates, but Fofana has not removed the post.
But since that apology, striker David Datro Fofana has also said: “Racism in all its forms should be condemned in the strongest possible terms. These acts have no place in football or even anywhere else.
“This fight really needs to be taken seriously by everyone involved in this sport.”
Meanwhile, Nicolas Jackson has pitched his tent in Camp Enzo, posting multiple sympathetic Instagram stories. One includes Fernandez playing with a black child – look everyone, he has black friends! Any squad harmony that new manager Enzo Maresca had fostered is already tenuous to non-existent. An already poisoned chalice has caught fire.
Ahead of the deserved criticism, it is worth saying that Chelsea have a range of excellent anti-racist initiatives and work to promote black and minority voices in football and media. Moving past the club’s stereotypically racist perception was a gargantuan task.
But they negate this work if they don’t respond adequately to Fernandez’s video. Their initial statement released on Wednesday morning ran to 55 words: “Chelsea Football Club finds all forms of discriminatory behaviour completely unacceptable. We are proud to be a diverse, inclusive club where people from all cultures, communities and identities feel welcome.
“We acknowledge and appreciate our player’s public apology and will use this as an opportunity to educate. The Club has instigated an internal disciplinary procedure.”
Legal restrictions are understandable, but this says nothing. Education is valuable within the wider rehabilitation process, but it should come after the punishment, not instead of it. Suggesting this video is the product of some ignorance or idiocy also infantilises Fernandez, who is old enough to know better. The chant has been around since the 2022 World Cup and the words – “they play in France but they are all from Angola” – aren’t exactly dripping in subtext.
But Chelsea will call for education because it is one of few strategies they have power to enforce. Football is so drenched in and driven by cash that the standard condemn-neutralise-remove approach to employee racism isn’t possible.
To owners and clubs, players exist in a liminal zone between human being and sporting robot, ideally a lot more of the latter and less of the former. As we have seen with Mason Greenwood, albeit in a vastly different case, clubs will do everything they can to protect a footballing asset if they can still extract value from it. You get a very clear image of how much racism really matters to these institutions when hundreds of millions are on the line.
“They could suspend him, but I don’t think they will,” Udo Onwere, sports lawyer at Bray & Krais and former Fulham midfielder, tells i. “They will give him a fine for gross misconduct – the legal maximum for that is two weeks wages.
“They will put out a public statement to say they’ve spoken to the player and he’s extremely remorseful, they’ll make all the right noises. They will make sure he has a public airing to express his apology, maybe alongside the captain, but they’ll look to move on with it.
“If it was a young academy player, they would do something a bit sterner. But because he cost £100m, it’s unlikely they’re going to ostracise or remove him.
“They’ll support him but condemn what he’s done, the same way Liverpool acted with Luis Suarez years ago, because of his value.”
Any football ban would have to come from the Football Association, who recommend six-to-12 match bans for racist offences. “The FA should be able to get involved if Chelsea get involved,” Onwere explains. “And if Fifa are getting involved, they may delegate to the FA as a member state.”
Regardless, Fernandez is likely to emerge from this tarnished but alive, still Chelsea’s second-most expensive signing and with a contract until 2032. This is an unforeseen consequence of the Chelsea ownership’s masterplan to spend the GDP of small nations on a smorgasbord of high-potential, low-age assets; cleaning house after a scandal simply isn’t an option.
Inevitably, this isn’t just a Chelsea issue. There were players from multiple other Premier League clubs on the bus, but they can rely on the plausible deniability of not being directly filmed singing the song. The clearly audible voices alongside Fernandez’s could belong to anyone, so they might as well belong to no one. It only matters if it is on camera.
And so, 12 years and a global awakening after John Terry received a four-match ban from the FA for calling Anton Ferdinand a “f—king black c—t”, Chelsea have another racism scandal on their hands. In 2012, then-chairman Bruce Buck described Terry’s words as “a lapse of judgement”, while the club announced they had punished Terry behind the scenes, but that it was confidential. It’s unclear what that penalty ever was, but Terry remained Chelsea captain until 2017 and still works in the academy.
Behind the facade of progress, the fear is that the club will handle it exactly as they did with Terry. Apologise, cry on TV, get the anti-racism armband out. Anything so football doesn’t actually have to change. We’re in far too deep for that.