Football has turned a blind eye for too long on racism, according to a German researcher who has called for tougher sanctions against clubs while offenders should be treated in a different way.
"What we see in football is not only a problem for society as a whole, but also has to do with football itself," racism researcher Lorenz Narku Laing from the Protestant University of Bochum said.
"In this social arena nothing has been done about racism for far too long, it has been tolerated for decades, almost normalised.
"We really need to think about whether matches should be abandoned and ruled a defeat by forfeit for the racist fan blocks."
Germany is hosting the Euro 2024 tournament in summer and the nation's football federation DFB launched an anti-racism campaign in March. The world governing body FIFA plans a resolution on racism at its congress in Bangkok next month.
But there have been various incidents of racism over the past months, especially in Italy and Spain.
Last week, Italy international Francesco Acerbi was cleared by a sports court from having racially abused Napoli player Juan Jesus, who said he was "discouraged" by the outcome.
Real Madrid and Brazil player Vinicius Junior, who has been racially abused on several occasions, shed tears when asked about the issue at a news conference.
On Saturday, he said on X, formerly Twitter, that three further incidents had occurred on the weekend, and added: "We will only have victory when the racists leave the stadiums straight to jail, the place they deserve."
Laing is not convinced that stadium bans or prison terms alone will help curb the problem, and called for an additional educational option for offenders.
"This person should be offered a seminar on racism by the sports association so that he really learns to understand for himself what it means and how much it hurts people," he said.
"It's not just about ejections, more police in stadiums and bans, it's about more empathy, more fairness, more togetherness, forgiveness and actually an emotionally personal learning journey for the people who are behaving wrongly."