"ALL RIGHT WHITE POWER WOOO"

I’m not an expert on soccer, and I’m certainly no authority on civil rights, but if I’ve learned one thing from being on the Internet for 15 years, it’s that anything prefaced with, “I’m not racist, but,” is about to get really racist.

Case in point: A supporters group for Russian Premier League team FC Zenit St. Petersburg have responded to the signing of Brazilian striker ‘Hulk’ with a carefully-worded thing about how people with brown skin hurt their national identity. If that sounds shifty to you, don’t worry: they aren’t racists. They say so right at the beginning!

“We’re not racists but we see the absence of black players at Zenit as an important tradition,” Zenit fan club Landscrona said in a letter, called the “Selection 12 manifesto”, posted on its website (www.landscrona.ru) on Monday.

“It would allow Zenit to maintain the national identity of the club, which is the symbol of St Petersburg.” [...]

“We only want players from other brotherly Slav nations, such as Ukraine and Belarus as well as from the Baltic states and Scandinavia. We have the same mentality and historical and cultural background as these nations,” the letter said.

I’m pretty sure a team’s fans issuing weird statements like this does more to hurt your national identity than a guy having slightly darker skin than his teammates, but what do I know?

As an added bonus, the group made sure to (randomly) include a little aside at the end about how gay people don’t try hard enough to get good at soccer. I’m not sure whether they hurt or help the symbolized national identity of St. Pete. This is also the biggest “everyone in soccer is gay” lay-up joke in Internet history, if you enjoy those.

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It’s getting harder and harder to shock you with violent soccer stories. Soccer players are always either wiping their blood on each other or starting kung fu gang brawls or being blown up by grenades, so if you see a screengrab of a soccer stadium on fire, chances are you’ll scroll right by it without a second thought. Of COURSE soccer fans set fire to a stadium.

It all happened (in Russia!) on Sunday after Zenit St. Petersburg’s win over FK Volga. The visiting Zenit fans, happy about what they’d just zeen, celebrated by torching their own seats, then throwing wood into the fire while dudes with fire hoses tried to put it out. The best part? The incident occurred at the hilariously Russian-sounding “Lokomotiv Stadium”.

Fire services in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod were forced to put out a blaze after fans set fire to seats at Lokomotiv Stadium.

The incident occurred in the aftermath of the match between home side FK Volga and reigning league champions Zenit St Petersburg, which ended 2-1 to the visitors.

Following the conclusion of the game, Zenit fans seated in the away section set several seats alight, with police reporting that some 430 seats in that part of the stadium were broken or destroyed. (via ITV.com)

If you’re already pumping your fists and going FIRE, FIRE, FIREEEEE, here’s the clip. Warning: extremely Russian.

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Straight from Russia (I think) comes this great video of a kid in a fox costume become the ultimate ballet troll. (via The Daily What)

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Links

5 Reasons Why Birthday Boy Bruce Springsteen Might Be The Coolest Musician Ever |UPROXX|

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¡Hasta la vista, brother!

By way of Sportress Of Blogitude come these pictures of Spain’s real, actual 2012 Summer Olympic uniforms, and to say they make the country’s best athletes look like pizza delivery boys or some sort of anthropomorphic kethups and mustards is an understatement.

Designed by Russian firm/old timey cartoon character Bosco, they are a hit with literally no one, especially Spanish Olympic Committee president Alejandro Blanco, a man tasked with coming up with something nice to say and choosing “well, we’re wearing them I guess”.

“The outfits are what we have, we cannot change them now, and were decided upon more than a year and a half ago.”

Field hockey player Alex Fabregas and canoeist (canoeist!) Saul Craviotto tweeted pictures of themselves in their gear and commented “Olympic outfit, there aren’t enough adjectives” and “At home trying on the Olympic clothes. Best I don’t comment, I will leave it up to you” respectively. I don’t know if they followed up the tweets the way they should’ve, because I don’t know what they call Ronald McDonald in Spain.

My theory: when Blanco says the outfits were decided upon “more than a year and a half ago”, he’s telling the truth — they were decided upon in 1994 when pro wrestling legend Hulk Hogan joined World Championship Wrestling. Please compare and contrast the following photos and tell me if I’m wrong.

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I don’t remember the last time we checked in with Phoenix Coyotes enforcer Paul Bissonnette, but usually if someone mentions his name it’s either accompanied by dude/bro story for the ages or very attractive females. Alas, comrades, this is not one of those days. No, this time Bissonnette is only being mentioned because he posted a copy of a Twitter direct message conversation he had the other day with Pittsburgh Penguins center Evgeni Malkin.

Granted, their conversation could have used a little more excitement, but Malkin’s “russia best” had Danger Guerrero and me chucking with delight yesterday as we rode horses on the beach. Their conversation gets even better, though, since I obtained a copy of the rest of their chat. Amazingly, it turns out that, much like me, they have very limited knowledge of Russia based on vague pop culture references.

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The best part of this Futsal argument escalating into a Muay Thai knockout (besides me learning what the hell “Futsal” is) is easily the YouTube commenter explaining his motivations:

This was in Russia , futsal 3rd division. I’ve asked the guy why he did that and he said he was pissed off because of the taunting on the missed tackle and being called gay.

I also would’ve accepted “he was told to stick a rubber hose up his nose so he shootkicked his opponent to death”. (via Sportress)

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Links

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Jeremy Lin, Tim Tebow Part Of Time’s 100 Most Influential People In The World |With Leather|

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