4 Chelsea fans convicted of racial violence

The idea that English football had shed its nasty racist football image was blown apart when back in Feb 2015 four Chelsea football fans were seen pushing a Black man - Souleymane Sylla - off a Paris Metro carriage, chanting: “We’re racist, we’re racist, and that’s the way we like it.”

Souleymane Sylla, who was on his way home from work, was traumatised by the incident in which English guests in his country could so blatantly abuse him and threaten him with extreme violence.

After nearly a two year wait a Paris Judge found all four men guilty of racism, gave them a suspended prison sentences and ordered them to pay ten thousand euro in compensation to Sylla.

Outside court Sylla, a father of four, told the media:

I am glad to see justice done.”

He said he had not been afraid to face the convicted men in court.

I have been waiting for justice for two years.

But although Joshua Parsons, James Fairbain, William Simpson, and Richard Barklie were all found guilty, and banned from football ground by an English judge, to many their collective punishment - each fined 2.5k euros - doesn’t send out a strong enough message. Despite being caught on camera hurling racial abuse and pushing Sylla, they all denied any form of racism. Such denial is often as bad as the initial incident.

But now having got their conviction I hope Sylla has the strength to mount a private prosecution and sues the four men, not least for loss of earnings, and hurt caused as a direct result of the incident.

Hitting them where it hurts - their pockets will at least remind them that there is a cause and effect.

Simon Woolley