In a few hours, Sepp Blatter (last seen getting a money shower) will kick off the 2018 World Cup drawing at St Petersburg as 141 countries find out who they face in their group. The 2018 World Cup is struggling to attract new sponsors in the wake of the FIFA corruption scandal. The FBI is now actively probing the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids and if evidence should emerge to show there was vote buying, these awards could be invalidated.

What is more disturbing is the prevalent racism that infects matches in the Russian league and is largely ignored by its soccer federation (RFS). Emmanuel Frimpong is the latest case as the former Arsenal man playing for Ufa was subjected to monkey chants by a fan in a weekend match against Spartak Moscow. He retaliated by showing the finger. For that he was red carded and banned for two games. If he was looking for words of support from his club, he could not have been more wrong. Shamil Gazizov, the Ufa managing director was unimpressed.

“What Frimpong did was wrong. Sometimes you even have to hold back the tears and just put up with it.”

The RFS found no evidence of racism which prompted FIFA to ask for an explanation. Reflecting on the incident, Frimpong tweeted this:

“For the Russian FA to say they didn’t hear or see any evidence of racism is beyond a joke”

Frimpong being hung out to dry by the league is not new. FC Rostov’s Guelor Kanga was banned for three games and fined $770 by the RFS for showing the middle finger to fans after monkey noises were made in the stands. The fans went unpunished.

The incident involving Frimpong or Kanga are by no means isolated as Hulk, the Brazilian winger who plays for Zenit St Petersburg says he’s a target for racism in “almost every game.” Roberto Carlos, Christopher Samba, and Yaya Toure have had their brushes with racism and Carlos ended his Anzhi Makachkala career after fans threw a banana on the pitch. Last October, Manchester City played their Champions League group game against CSKA Moscow behind closed doors as the Russian club was sanctioned by UEFA for a variety of reasons, including racist chanting.

FARE, the anti discrimination group in association with the SOVA centre have prepared a report which documents well over 200 cases of racism.

“It shows a really quite gruesome picture of a domestic league which is full of aspects of racism and xenophobia. The far-right play a significant role in the fan culture,” Fare executive director Piara Powar said in an AP interview. Just one manifesto tells you the disturbing trend and power wielded by neo-Nazis in the Russian league.

On 17 December, Landoskona the largest Zenit fan group published a manifesto, ‘Selection-12’, in which they decreed that gay and black players should not be signed by the club.

We also have to frame the racism in its ethnic form because being “gay” and “black” are taken as obvious signs of not being Russian. But “not being Russian” also includes people from the Caucasus who are despised by white Russians. Futbolgrad’s “Russian Football Hooliganism- The Caucasian Divide” is an eye opener of the intolerance sweeping through the silent majority that tacitly approves of displays of overt racism with a wink and a nod.

“Indeed, football fans see themselves as being at the vanguard of a larger nationalistic movement, one that goes beyond a group of extremists, but echoes the beliefs of a silent majority of ethnic Russians.”

Strikingly, not unlike Donald Trump and his propulsion to the top of the GOP presidential polls with his “Mexicans are infection carrying rapists” mantra which strikes a resonance with a large base who say the man with the ridiculous hairpiece articulates what they feel but are afraid to say.

Manuel Veth, a Futbolgrad writer and a passionate advocate for equality sees some promise that the RFS is finally waking up to the problem with its appointment of an anti-racism inspector. In March, Torpedo Moscow was ordered to play two home matches with doors closed after their fans racially abused Hulk. CSKA Moscow fan Robert Ustian started the first club generated initiative #CSKAFansAgainstRacism on social media reminding fans of Russia’s bloody fight against fascism in WWII which took millions of lives.

Such measures give hope but Veth warns racism goes beyond football and to the heart of Russian society which needs sustained education to eradicate racism at its roots. Yuri Boychenko, the chief of the anti-discrimination section of the UN Office of the High Commission for Human Rights gives voice.

“It is a behavioral problem. It is a societal problem. In Russia, indeed we have also noticed there is no understanding of what racism means.”

Russia has three years to make sure fans and players across the world who come for the World Cup feel safe. They might get their World Cup but it will be a pyrrhic victory if no one shows up.