FOOTBALL is getting bleaker, and that’s not counting England’s somnolent display in midweek in washed-out Warsaw, or considering the price of a cup of tea at Manchester City costing a whopping £2.50 – gulp.

The most desolate feature of the past seven days was the snarling, contorted, vein-popping face of racism, which exploded in all its pustule-filled venom in the Krusevac stadium which hosted the European qualifying Under-21 play-off second leg between Serbia and England.

The scenes at the final whistle at which players, officials, backroom staffs and fans were all locked in grappling, grabbing, squabbling and, in several incidents, all-out assaults, are not how the game of football should be remembered.

But while those scenes were unsavoury, they were the upshot of even more disgraceful behaviour on the terraces from Serbian supporters who racially abused the several black players in England’s team.

Danny Rose, unbelievably sent off for kicking the ball into a crowd, large parts of which had taunted him with monkey chants and peppered him with objects hurled from the terraces, said the abuse started in the warm-up. He, Marvin Sordell and Tom Ince were all singled out for the cruellest and most narrow-minded of racial garbage.

For their relatives and family tuning in it must have been so raw and gut-wrenching. Ince’s father, the combative former England, Liverpool, Manchester United and Inter Milan midfielder, wanted his son out of there as quickly as possible as he watched the game unfold as a co-commentator with York City defender Clarke Carlisle, who is also the chairman of the Professional Footballers’ Association.

If someone as honed in the sickening twisted ways of racism like Ince – in his playing pomp the issue was still a virulent cancer in the English game – was so disgusted, then heaven knows how those abused England players felt out there in deepest Serbia.

It’s beyond the ken of anyone who isn’t black to appreciate just how it feels to be the targets of what must have seemed almost an entire stadium, an entire nation, having a go.

As the inquest into the events at Krusevac unfolds, claims and counter-claims are now popping up like so many combustible flares.

Uefa and Fifa – respectively the European and world governing bodies of the game – have got to see beyond the smoke and the mirrors that will no doubt be employed to fog the issue.

If they have any balls then they have to come down like the proverbial weight of bricks on Serbia.

Never mind gathering statements from right, far right, and ultra-right, the evidence is there in the television coverage. Both the soundtrack and the pictures have already identified and condemned the racists. So get on with the punishment.

And like Minsterman Carlisle, the grossly insulted Rose and England senior team captain Steven Gerrard, I believe the only way to a solution would be to ban Serbia, not just from one tournament, but several, not just for one year, but several.

Meagre fines, which have so far been imposed not just on Serbia, but other countries who have besmirched the game with out and out racism, are useless, pointless and utterly ineffective.

Uefa and Fifa have merely created rods for their own backs by handing out so many measly cash penalties.

Deprivation of following the game the racists so riotously and readily tarnish is the only way to address the problem.

However, here back in England a rod has also been manufactured by our own governing body.

It little behoves us to sit astride morality’s high horse when someone like the former England captain John Terry, now contrition personified, is banned for a mere four games for his racial abuse of Queens Park Rangers defender Anton Ferdinand.

Yes, he was cleared by Westminster Magistrates, though the chief magistrate said the defender’s explanation for his use of racial language was “unlikely”.

And while found guilty by the FA, he gets a suspension just one match more than what he could expect for a red card for violent conduct. What he said, no matter what his so-called tone, was far more brutal than a bad tackle.

Now that Terry has agreed not to contest the paltry FA punishment, the ill-feeling has been compounded by Chelsea announcing they too have penalised their captain, though those measures will remain confidential. No surprise there then. Transparency all-round, pah.

The English FA’s glasshouse still has to be in order if it is to point accusing fingers at other nations. So much to do in Serbia, still more to do at home.