Abuse on football terraces is rampant. Why hasn’t it been stamped out?

Challenge anyone singing – and plenty do – and the reaction is always the same: a hefty dose of whataboutery, writes Jim White

Intolerance of bigotry needs to become the presiding sense at the game, it needs to reach into its ugliest fissures (PA)

An ugly, anything goes verbal antagonism permeates much of British football culture. From Arsenal fans chanting about Emmanuel Adebayor, their former player who went on to play for Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Crystal Palace, “Adebayor, three died in Angola, it should have been four”, through West Ham supporters doing gas chamber hissing when playing Tottenham Hotspur and their sizeable Jewish fanbase, to the sectarian bigotry that festers whenever Celtic play Rangers, football provides opportunity and cover for the kind of behaviour regarded as intolerable in any other circumstance. In what may be the latest example, a man was charged with displaying threatening or abusive writing likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress after wearing a shirt allegedly referencing the Hillsborough disaster at Saturday's FA Cup final.

Earlier this season, ahead of the game between the two clubs at Anfield, the Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp and his United counterpart Erik ten Hagissued a joint statement condemning what they called “tragedy chanting”. The rivalry between the two sides is electric enough, they reckoned, without it being bespoiled by ugly songs.