If I were the head of the Serbian Football Federation, I’d be worried. The racist chanting by Serbian fans during their U21 team’s final group match against England has really landed them in it. UEFA don’t mess about when it comes to serious matters like this; they operate a policy of ‘zero tolerance’.

Or at least that’s what UEFA's clownish spokesman, William Gaillard, would like us to believe.

Among the besuited, champagne-quaffing footballcrats at UEFA, ‘zero tolerance’ is something of a hazy expression. For it can imply numerous eventualities, to which if you or I were pushed to give a numeric tolerance-value, it would certainly not be zero. For example, when Ashley Cole was subjected to monkey chants at the Santiago Bernabeu, when England played Spain three years ago, the Spanish FA were fined £30,000. Considering gate receipts for that game would have been upwards of £1.5 million, the fine imposed was not zero-tolerant. I would probably place it somewhere in the region of 6-tolerance, which is fairly tolerant, given that my scale only goes up to 10 and 10 would have involved letting the Spanish off scot-free.

So, following the embarrassing events of Sunday night, what punishment can we expect to see meted out to the Serbian FA?

Those of us who don’t ride to work on the UEFA gravy train would expect to see Serbia expelled from the competition. No ifs, no buts, no questions. That way, in any future tournaments, fans who come to support their team or country would know that racist behaviour was counterproductive to their cause. This is the commonsense solution. So will it happen? Of course not. UEFA have already said that nothing will happen before an investigation takes place on July 12th.

An investigation is presumably required to establish that the monkey chants were actually monkey chants and not some inoffensive noise that sounded just like monkey chants. By the time this investigation takes place, the tournament will have been over for nearly three weeks.

However, once the necessary investigation has established for certain that the monkey noises were actually monkey noises, we can then expect to see Serbia banned from taking part in the next Euro U21s. Not likely! This just wouldn’t be in keeping with UEFA’s policy of burying their head in the sand and trying not to do anything too proactive.

A ban is not going to happen. It never does with UEFA. Every racist incident in European football has been met with a paltry fine and no further action and that is exactly what will happen to Serbia. A drawn out investigation will be quietly concluded and UEFA’s mouthy spokesman will claim that the fine is another example of Europe’s governing body getting tough on racism. Meanwhile, Serbia’s mediaeval fans will continue to make their presence known in their own unpleasant way.