Savile chant shame for English game. Plus: Kinsky howlers as Spurs crumble

Elland Road, Sunday teatime. The FA Cup fifth-round tie between Leeds United and Norwich City is drifting toward its conclusion when, from the away end, the familiar cadence rises again: a song that invokes the name of Jimmy Savile, the late television personality unmasked after death as one of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders. Leeds supporters, stung, respond in kind. The cycle repeats, unbroken, as it has for more than a decade.

English football’s inability—or unwillingness—to stop these chants has become a running sore. Savile had no connection to Leeds United beyond living in the city, yet his name has been weaponised in terrace warfare, traded between rival fans with impunity. Unlike tragedy chanting related to Hillsborough or other stadium disasters—now prosecutable under public-order legislation—songs about Savile occupy a grey zone. The Crown Prosecution Service’s current guidance covers only football-related tragedies; Savile’s crimes, horrific and numerous, fall outside that definition.

Leeds have belatedly taken up the fight. On Monday morning the club issued a statement urging the CPS to reclassify Savile-based taunts as tragedy chanting, arguing that the sport’s complicity makes them football-related. “The club’s supporters are subjected to these sickening taunts at every match by opposition fans,” the statement read. “Equally, the club disapproves of retaliatory chants from our own supporters.” The Football Association, for its part, says existing law leaves it powerless to sanction individuals; the UK Football Policing Unit has advised that successful prosecution is “unrealistic” under current statutes.

The wider game, meanwhile, looks away. No league-wide condemnation, no robust stewarding protocol, no concerted campaign. As Simon Hughes notes in an extended piece for The Athletic today, the matter remains “a boil waiting to be lanced.”

While Leeds lobby for legal change, Tottenham Hotspur are confronting a crisis of a different order. In Madrid on Wednesday night, Ange Postecoglou’s interim successor Igor Tudor handed a European debut to backup goalkeeper Antonin Kinsky for the first time since October. Within 17 minutes the Czech’s evening, and possibly his confidence, lay in tatters. A mishit clearance presented Atlético Madrid with the opening goal; an almost identical error gifted them a third. Tudor hooked the 23-year-old on 17 minutes, a mercy substitution designed, he said, “to preserve the guy.”

By then the tie was effectively over. Atlético led 4-0 inside 22 minutes and coasted to a 5-2 win that flattered Spurs, who now face a near-impossible task in next week’s return leg. Tudor, winless in five matches and openly second-guessed by senior players, cut a forlorn figure on the touchline. “I’d like to say this is rock bottom,” one club source admitted, “but something tells me it isn’t.”

Elsewhere in the last-16 first legs, Bayern Munich underlined their credentials by thrashing Atalanta 6-1 in Bergamo without ever needing Harry Kane off the bench; Michael Olise’s virtuoso display took his assist tally for the season to 26. Liverpool slipped to a 1-0 defeat at Galatasaray on Arne Slot’s 100th match in charge, while Barcelona escaped St James’ Park with a 1-1 draw thanks to a 96th-minute Lamine Yamal penalty. All three ties remain alive, though Liverpool and Barça will trust home advantage to tilt the balance.

Back in England, the Savile-chant debate grinds on. Unless the CPS expands its definition of tragedy chanting, or Parliament intervenes, the songs will echo again this weekend. For a sport that markets itself as family-friendly and socially responsible, the silence from the top of the game is deafening.