Spain head coach Luis Aragones said that there were no racism problems in Spanish football and insisted that the entire Samuel Eto'o incident was exaggerated. "Eto'o may have confused things. Insults take a different form here, so I don't think there's racism," Aragones told the Efe news agency on Saturday. "Eto'o has taken literally some things which were said to him and the affair has been exaggerated," he added. Barcelona's Cameroonian star threatened to leave the pitch against Real Zaragoza, after the latter's fans made monkey noises at him.
Eto'o Zaragoza were handed a $10,100 fine by the Spanish Football Federation, a fine that was ridiculed by FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who insisted that harsher sanctions should be imposed if they were to succeed in their campaign against racism. Nevertheless, Aragones' recent statements doesn't come as a surprise after his infamous incident in 2004, when he used a racist remark to describe Arsenal striker Thierry Henry and made other statements about England's colonial past. Spain's boss was later fined $3,610 by the Spanish federation.
