By Alaa Abdel-Ghani "Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh. " Sounds familiar? It should. Anybody watching any TV last week heard it. No, it wasn't in the top 10 music charts. And no, it isn't monkeys in heat, although you're hot. It's the sound some monkeys make when they're watching football. At Bernabeu Stadium in Madrid, where England and Spain met in a supposed football friendly, hundreds -- more like thousands -- of Spanish ape men, no doubt descendants of Señor Caveman, let out their primate call of the wild. Replays showed that this vocal activity had little to do with the monkey mating season in Spain. The crowd had in fact gone ape over two humans, English footballers Ashley Cole and Shaun Wright-Phillips. Both happen to be black. Hence the chorus of monkey noises every time they touched the ball. It was ugly, a disgrace. Despicable and pathetic. Fans ought to be allowed to give opposing players a bit of stick but this was way over the top. Most people agree. Tony Blair was "very disappointed at what happened". Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos "apologised to anyone who may have felt offended by these expressions". FIFA boss Sepp Blatter said: "Football must reject racism of any kind." While all agree that racism must be kicked out of soccer; the question is what options are available. FIFA launched a code of ethics in October and it is under heavy pressure to enforce what it established. It covers banners bearing racist slogans and chants; offenders face a minimum �15,000 fine and their clubs up to five matches behind closed doors. There are plenty of ideas -- a warning over the public address system, something akin to a yellow card; the expulsion of the offending country from the World Cup; allowing the ref to put a premature end to the game; banning culprit spectators. So far though, all of the above is much talk. Full stop. There is one idea I would not suggest. A walkout of players, while possible, could set a precedent. Blatter said he would have supported the English players had they walked off but he might have changed his mind had it been an official game. A walkout would stir up a hornet's nest, with fans of a losing team striking up abuse to have a game called off. Besides, leaving the pitch will make stupid people the winners. Better to beat them on the playing field than walk off it. What happened in Spain is nothing new. It's everywhere. In France, two Bastia black players were taken to one side, roughed up and insulted by some 30 supporters in a car park after Bastia lost 3-0 at home to Saint-Etienne. Also last week, Birmingham's Dwight Yorke, of Manchester United fame, was the subject of racial daunts during a game against Blackburn. But for some reason it's worse in Spain. Perhaps that's because a lot of Spaniards can't understand what all the hullabaloo is about. The Spanish sports daily AS wrote the day after: "In our country, where multi-culturalism is new, we have a naiveté which makes the English nervous." Whatever the explanation, top black players in the Spanish league are exposed to racism on a regular basis. To be fair to the Spanish, it's only a minority who do the chanting and the gestures. The majority are decent people out to have a pleasant time. Unfortunately, a few rotten apples are giving Spanish football a collective bad name. Which means FIFA and UEFA must take the bull by the horns. There must be a Spanish inquisition. A good way to start is to redefine the covenant between players and fans. There is a boundary that separates fans from the field and that is immutable. Soccer's watchdog bodies must redefine the bounds of acceptable conduct for fans and to resolve to permanently exclude those who overstep these bounds. Spain has given us many things: the Spanish omelet, Spanish rice, Spanish Armada. Let the country not add creatively linguistic ultra-right-wing soccer bigots to the list. They're only making monkeys out of themselves.
