Every couple of weeks there’s a new racism scandal in football, and every time you wonder if we can sink any lower.

And then you hear 10,000 children booing a black man because he’s a victim of racist abuse.

When Sparta Prague and Rangers played out their Europa League group match at the Letná Stadium on Thursday night, they did so in front of a crowd composed almost entirely of schoolchildren.

That was due to racist chants from Sparta fans directed at Monaco’s Aurelien Tchouameni in August’s Champions League qualifier. That incident came less than four months after Slavia Prague centre-back Ondřej Kúdela was found guilty by UEFA of having racially abused Rangers midfielder Glen Kamara during a Europa League match at Ibrox.

During Thursday’s match, Kamara was relentlessly booed by those children, with the jeers reaching a crescendo as the 25-year-old made his way from the pitch having received his second yellow card.

Kamara, incidentally, deserves great credit for the dignity with which he walked off in the face of provocation.

Sparta and Slavia may be rivals in Prague, but their mutual hatred of Kamara clearly transcends football rivalry.

If you were unaware of the context and heard that two city rivals had put their differences aside and come together to fight a common enemy, you might be optimistic. What could they be protesting? VAR? The purging of working-class fans from their sport through exorbitant ticket prices? The acquisition of their clubs by human rights abusers seeking to whitewash their reputations?

‘Eh, actually, we’re joining hands across the divide to, eh, protest against black players being upset about, eh, having received racist abuse’.

As much as those children are in the wrong for their behaviour and need to be educated as to why their booing was unfair and harmful, their actions didn’t occur in a vacuum. BT Sport commentator Rory Hamilton summed this up perfectly during the game when he said: “They might be children, but that message comes from somewhere”.

This is learned behaviour that comes from their parents and older siblings, and those parents and older siblings are emboldened by the media, the club and UEFA.

One Prague-based journalist, who commands a following of over 33,000 on Twitter, shared a BBC Sport article which was headlined: ‘More has to be done to tackle racism’. The headline itself was in inverted commas, which would tell even the least media-literate reader that it was a quotation and not necessarily the opinion of the person typing it up.

This journalist, however, saw fit to say: “Poor piece of journalism by the BBC. Headline ‘More needs to be done to tackle racism - Gerrard not surprised by Kamara booing’ suggests booing at Kamara is a matter of racism. How do you know? Not a single word about the incidents at Rangers-Slavia game”.

Ooh, he’s so close to getting it. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and type ‘Rangers Slavia incident’ into Google. Maybe I’d be able to establish what he meant by “incidents at Rangers-Slavia game”.

The first result read: “Slavia Prague’s Ondrej Kudela banned by UEFA for 10 games for ‘racist behaviour’”.

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In the replies, one Rangers supporter tweeted: “He was booed from the first whistle. What do you think the reason was?”, to which a fan from Prague replied: “It’s simple. All the fans here hate him. That’s all…*shoulder shrug emoji*”.

Again, so close. We’ve already established that the fans hate him. The question was “What do you think the reason was?”. I’m intrigued as to what reason Czech fans can give for hating Kamara. Is there some kind of historical enmity between the city of Prague and deep-lying Finnish midfielders that I’ve just not done my research on?

The targeting of Kamara throughout Thursday’s game was racism, pure and simple. You don’t have to use the n-word to be racist. You can disproportionately stop and search black people, overlook their concerns in the workplace or apply demeaning cultural stereotypes to them without ever using a racial slur. It’s still racism. And that’s exactly what Kamara experienced on Wednesday night. Abuse that only happened because he had the audacity to be subjected to racism by someone from the Czech Republic six months ago.

Friday afternoon saw Sparta release a statement, which took 297 words to say what a fingers-in-ears or hands-over-eyes emoji would have expressed just as clearly.

In what a modern audience would consider ‘gaslighting’ and what would otherwise be known as ‘utter bullshit’, their statement read: “It is absolutely unbelievable that after a match we have to watch innocent children being attacked and face unfounded accusations of racism. Insulting children on the internet and in the media is unacceptable, desperate and ridiculous.

“Stop attacking our children! Our club will proudly defend our children - our future and our pride. Slandering children on the internet is extremely cowardly.

“We are seeing unprecedented xenophobic statements against the Czech Republic, its citizens and even its children on the social medias (sic). You are describing the behaviour of children incorrectly, arrogating to yourself the right to judge the expression of emotions of six-year-old children who have no idea what racism is. It’s an impertinence.

“Sadly, we have to read the desperate attacks of lawyer Aamer Anwar, who goes beyond what a lawyer should be allowed to do. In the Czech environment, his conduct would have been dealt with by the Bar Association by now. His activism and online bullying should be dealt with by the relevant institution in Scotland. Inciting xenophobic tendencies and verbal attacks on defenceless children are beyond the pale of morality and decorum.

“Finally, on behalf of the club’s board, players, coaches and all staff, we would like to thank the children for a wonderful and unique atmosphere. Thank you, we love you. The parents who made it possible for their sons and daughters to attend, as well as the coaches and teachers who came to Letná Stadium as supervisors and contributed significantly to the smooth organisation of the match, also deserve our thanks and respect. This match will go down in the club’s history in a positive sense.

“We ask the representatives of Rangers FC to do their part to stop the xenophobic atmosphere directed towards our children, our beautiful country and its inhabitants”.

A fair bit to unpick there.

Firstly, it is not the children being “attacked”, at least not by anyone of sound mind. Their behaviour, while unacceptable, is the result of six months of minimising, deflection and victim-blaming from people around them. They’ve inadvertently underlined this point by referring to “six-year-old children who have no idea what racism is”.

Secondly, characterising Anwar’s tweet as “desperate attacks” and “online bullying” is outrageous. Anwar - a widely-respected Criminal Defence Lawyer who represents Kamara - will have chosen his words carefully on Thursday night when he tweeted: “I hoped stadium closure to Sparta Prague fans for their racial abuse of Monaco’s Tchouameni & invite to 10,000 kids would mean that @GlenKamara4 & all the other black players @RangersFC didn’t have to face racism, no such luck tonight as the kids carried on the abuse - shameful”.

If you’ve spotted ‘online bullying’ there, feel free to explain it to me in the comments. He hasn’t identified a single Sparta fan in his tweet, or encouraged anyone to direct abuse at them. As for ‘desperate attacks’, his words were measured, and ‘desperate’ would imply that he was frantically trying to come up with an allegation rather than clearly articulating what anyone watching the match at home could witness for themselves.

Thirdly, it’s all very well lauding the “wonderful and unique atmosphere” generated by those children, but leaving aside the fact that booing a black man because he was racially abused isn’t something I would consider ‘wonderful’ or ‘unique’, there’s a fairly big elephant in the room here.

Even if you genuinely believe the atmosphere created by 10,000 schoolchildren and very few adults was a good thing, why were the vast majority of spectators children in the first place? The answer, of course, is that Sparta were being punished for another racist incident.

It’s this shameless and unconscionable deflection that leads to Thursday night’s scenes, and to the racist abuse that Kamara once again endured on social media in the aftermath. They’ve washed their hands of it and pointed the finger at Rangers, just as Slavia did last season.

In his interview with Sky Sports on Friday morning, Anwar said of UEFA: “Let’s be blunt, they’re a disgrace...They like to talk about ‘respect’. Where is the respect for Glen Kamara?”.

It’s worth remembering that the 10-game ban handed to Kúdela was the minimum punishment at their disposal. Not a year (as called for by Anwar at the time). Not six months. 10 games.

As I said at the time, UEFA effectively told players that the amount of games they will miss for calling a black man a “fucking monkey” is no greater than the amount they would miss while recovering from a groin injury.

No-one could have complained with a straight face had Sparta been forced to play Thursday’s game behind closed doors following the abuse received by Tchouameni. That would have spared Kamara another traumatic experience, and spared our gag reflexes the awkwardness of reacting to that Sparta statement.

Instead, the message seems to have been ‘Adults aren’t allowed in to abuse black players, but let’s see how it sounds with higher-pitched voices’.

Where’s the statement of condemnation from UEFA? Maybe they’re preparing further punishment for Sparta on the basis of their behaviour this week, but there’s little in UEFA’s history that makes me particularly hopeful.

The media, the club and UEFA have all played their part in allowing this to happen, and the adults who these children absorb attitudes and behaviour from must bear their share of responsibility as well.

Whether it’s in the Czech Republic or anywhere else, there are some football fans who are simply incapable of having a proper, grown-up conversation about racism or any other societal issue without viewing it through the prism of their favourite football team.

Does it make my rivals look bad? Condemn it. Does it make my team look bad? Condone it.

Racism is an infinitely more important subject than football, but some Slavia fans in March and Sparta supporters in September have viewed Kúdela as a Slavia player engaged in a rivalry with a Rangers player rather than viewing him as a white man racially abusing a black man.

Whether it involves Slavia Prague, Sparta Prague or any other club, we all need to look beyond our footballing allegiances when discussing and responding to racism. Prioritising the optics for your preferred football club over the impact on the victim is a childlike way of approaching a subject far more serious than football.

Sparta and Slavia need to own this, from the top of the club down to the supporters. Journalists in the Czech Republic need to call it out unequivocally. European football’s governing body needs to send a clear message that every match played in a UEFA competition will be a safe environment for black players.

On Thursday night the boos came from children, but the grown men deflecting from, excusing, downplaying and facilitating them are every bit as immature.

Solidarity with Glen Kamara.