England put out the “biggest statement in international football” on Monday night – but still UEFA show no signs of taking the lead in the fight against racism.
Bulgaria were charged with “racist behaviour (chants, Nazi salutes)”, throwing objects, disrupting the national anthem and showing replays on the giant screen.
England are not off the hook, either, with their fans also charged with disrupting the Bulgarian national anthem and the FA accused of providing an “insufficient number of travelling stewards”.
But any direct words of condemnation from UEFA of the abhorrent racist acts that took place were conspicuous by their absence.
Instead, a statement from president Aleksander Ceferin appeared to criticise England for trying to face the issue head-on.
“Football associations themselves cannot solve this problem,” he said. “Governments too need to do more in this area.”
Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borisov forced Bulgarian Football Union Borislav Mikhailov to resign after police raided the BFU headquarters.
Downing Street described the scenes in Sofia as “vile” and urged UEFA to “face up to facts”.
Meanwhile, Ceferin simply reiterated that the partial closure of a ground was an effective punishment – even though a blocked-off section of 5,000 seats was impossible to distinguish in a stadium that was only half full.
“It is a move which costs the hosts at least hundreds of thousands in lost revenue and attaches a stigma to their supporters,” Ceferin insisted.
Nothing, however, like the stigma of twice stopping the game to deal with the issue.
“I think we’ve made a bigger statement than any team ever has done within international football,” England boss Gareth Southgate said.
“We’ve had the game stopped twice and we’ve made everybody in Europe and around the world aware that this is an issue that we weren’t prepared to accept.”
Southgate also revealed that his players not only were ready get the game abandoned altogether, but even expected to.
“We were sat 10 minutes from half-time, my assistant Steve Holland and myself, saying: ‘I don’t think we are going to finish this game’,” he added.
“We knew that if we came off the pitch, we probably wouldn’t be going back on and we were very clear, as a group at half-time, that if anything happened in the second half, everyone was going off.”
The racist chanting was not clear on the UEFA-sanctioned microphones which provided the world feed, but ITV’s extra pitch-side cameras clearly picked up the monkey chants that they broadcast in their coverage of the 6-0 win for England.
They are happy to make that evidence available to any investigation.
The FA also took it upon themselves to collect witness statements from players and staff after events in Sofia, but Southgate said: “With respect, the amount we’ve had to deal with is remarkable.
“Other people are in positions to be able to affect that – clearly it has got to be dealt with differently.”