Football is England's national game. It is now also, England's national shame. 

You need only to turn to the back pages of any daily or Sunday newspaper - although these days it is more often likely to be featured on the front - or switch on the television news to see the sleazy depths to which the sport has plunged.

Last weekend provided a shocking example: "Disgraceful!" roared the Mail on Sunday. "Echoes of the dark days as players are bitten, barged and struck after thousands invade pitch before end of Villa's Cup win."

This was typical of reports both in print and on  the box as football turned back the clock 30 years or more to the bad old days of the 1970s and 1980s with the mass pitch invasion of fans of both clubs after Aston Villa's 2-0 defeat of Midlands rivals West Bromwich Albion in the FA Cup quarter-finals.

Seats were hurled, players assaulted and stewards overwhelmed. Villa apologised, the West Brom manager Tony Pulis demanded life bans for unruly fans and the English FA are holding an investigation,with the certainty of heavy fines and the possibility of ground closure. All horribly déjà vu

Aston Villa fans spill onto the pitch following their FA Cup quarter-final victory over fierce rivals West Bromwich Albion ©Getty Images



It wasn't the only unsavoury incident, either. A Watford supporter is in a critical condition in hospital after an unprovoked assault in Wolverhampton on Saturday (March 7) following the 2-2 draw between the clubs.

Sadly, football has been besmirched by a triple whammy of isms...racism, sexism and hooliganism.

The Beautiful Game? More like the Bigoted Game.

On top of the censuring of players from Manchester United and Newcastle United for spitting at each other the weekend brought to the boil the simmering unpleasantness of the past couple of weeks in which Chelsea fans travelling to and from big games in Paris and at Wembley have twice seen and heard to be blatant racist; and footage also emerged of the sexist verbal abuse faced by a female Chelsea doctor from fans at Old Trafford.

In the YouTube clip Eva Carneiro can be seen walking along the side-lines as Manchester United fans scream abusive slurs at her.

The video shows fans shouting in unison: "Get your t*** out for the lads" and other obscenties unfit to print.

Chelsea claim this recording is not the first incidence of sexist verbal abuse suffered by Dr Carneiro, who prior to joining the club worked with Team GB in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

A female assistant referee Helen Byrne has suffered taunts during recent Football League matches.

Chelsea physiotherapist Eva Carneiro has suffered much sexist abuse from hostile away fans ©AFP/Getty Images



This  season, 25 match-day incidents of sexist abuse have been reported to anti-discrimination campaign group Kick It Out and equality group Women in Football (WiF). Last season, there were just two.

However, a lack of evidence means no club or fan has ever been punished by football's governing bodies.

Sexism in football is nothing new of course. When Britain's first female referee, Wendy Toms, was coming up through the ranks she endured endless tasteless jibes and a player was once sent off for reminding her "this is  man's game" and calling her a "f...... bitch".

Sky Sports presenter Richard Keys resigned and pundit Andy Gray was sacked in 2011 for claiming assistant referee Sian Massey did not know the offside rule because she was a woman.

The Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore apologised last May after private emails he had sent to friends and colleagues were revealed to contain sexist content.

Northumberland County Football Association John Cummings was sacked last year for telling referee Lucy May that "a woman's place is in the kitchen".

And the FA fined and suspended Wigan Athletic owner Dave Whelan, who has since quit, for comments deemed to be racist and are still investigating texts that were allegedly racist, sexist and homophobic sent between the Wigan manager Malky Mackay, then with Cardiff City, and former Crystal Palace sporting director Ian Moody.

Wigan Athletic manager Malky Mackay is another British footballing figure to have been accused of discrimination in recent times ©Getty Images



Sports journalist Anna Kessel, chair of WiF, says sexist chanting continued at matches because stadium safety managers and stewards were often not briefed on how to recognise and deal with it.

"Sexism in football is so entrenched within the culture of the game to a point where racism is recognised as wrong but sexism is just recognised as banter," she adds.

Yet there is one pertinent question which the game itself continues to ignore. Why is it the only sport riddled with such unseemly aberrations of physical and verbal violence?

What is it about football that it continues to be so enmeshed in the sort of opprobrium which evades other sports?

How do you deal with the soccer sickos? Why does no other sport suffer this yob mentality? The truth is that in this country both the FA and the Premier League shy away from establishing an authoritative grip on the game for fear of upsetting those who lavishly bankroll it. And for international governance, well, the mere mention of FIFA is universally greeted with a derisory sniff of the nostrils.

So is it all down to socio-economics? Do other sports attract a better class of follower, far fewer mindless scumbags?

Maybe. But many of those racists, sexists and hooligans who seem to comprise the unacceptable face of football hail from the midde classes, white collar workers, some of whom are revealed to have well-paid jobs in the City.

Of course some also may be state-sponging layabouts but others are just as likely to be upper class twits, those Hooray Henrys who have attached themselves to football as their latest fad.

Why is footy such a magnet for these types. You don't get this sort of loutish, racist or sexist behaviour in other theatres of sport.

Racist chanting on the way to watch Olympic 100 metres metres final in Stratford? Hurling bananas on to the rugby field at Twickenham?  Abusing female line judges at Wimbledon? Invading the pitch after a Test match at Lord's? Perish the thought.

The last time I remember any element of racism in boxing was back in 1980 when the then British world middleweight champion, Olympic bronze medallist Alan Minter, shockingly  declared before defending his belt against Marvin Hagler at Wembley: "There's no way I am going to lose my title to a black man."

He was subsequently vilified, there was a riot at ringside and yes, he did lose to Hagler. Brutally and quickly. And Minter has never been allowed to forget it.

Had that slur been uttered today he rightly would be banned.

The Olympics have not always been free of racist or sexual prejudice, as we are aware from history, though thankfully not in modern times.

I suppose the International Olympic Committee might argue that what happened with the infamous Black Power salute in Mexico Ciy in 1968 by American athletes John Carlos and Tommie Smith was a sort of racism. But surely it was more a demonstration against it.

John Carlos and Tommie Smith's Black Power Salute at Mexico 1968 was the most famous example of racial protest at an Olympic Games ©AFP/Getty Images



As for the sexism issue Kessel claims: "Women don't have the confidence to report it. This is the message that we're getting through our network. They are very reluctant to complain. They feel they should put up with it."

One who certainly did complain was the ever-feisty West Ham vice chair Baroness Brady of Knightsbridge. As plain Karren Brady, when she got her first job in football as chief executive at Birmingham City, she travelled with the team on their coach to an away game and happened to be wearing a low-cut sweater. "Hey Karren" called out one wag from the back of the bus. "I can see your boobs."

"Take a good look," she retorted. "Because you won 't be able to see them when I transfer you to Crewe."

She did, too.

As the bold Brady ably demonstrated then, sexism in football needs to be taken as seriously as racism, or any other 'ism.

Alan Hubbard is a sports columnist for the Independent on Sunday and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.