A long way to achieve this goal. Eurosport reports that the young Belgian footballer Norman Bassette signed his first contract as a professional with Stade Malherbe de Caen (Ligue 2) in 2021. The now 17-year-old completes his training at the Normandy club without any problems: a real success for a boy whose youth was marked by bullying at school – and anti-white racism.
As a youngster, Norman Bassette was trained at the Belgian first division club AS Eupen, which is located not far from the German border. At the same time, he attended a grammar school near his club as a boarding student – but far away from his parents, who lived in Luxembourg and had no idea what their son was going through. One evening, when young Norman was on his way to his parents’ house, he asked his mother, who is a hairdresser, to shave his head. “We parents say to each other, “But why does our son want to shave his hair?”, his father tells Eurosport.
His son’s answer comes quickly: “At school they say I’m Hitler’s son because I’m blond,” says the teenager, who obviously often feels bullied because of his skin colour. This goes so far that Norman Bassette uses the discussion with his parents to ask the question: “Dad, why am I white?”. The aspirant’s parents discovered the terrible truth: “People stole money from him, sweets … If you had to take your anger out on someone, it was him,” his father recalled.
Even worse: while the headmistress of Norman Bassette’s school claims to have known nothing about it, the boy’s parents learn that “the educators did notice the bullying, but preferred not to say anything …”. Norman Bassette then has to be transferred to another school. The situation is so bad that he is even enrolled at a special school for people with disabilities. There the young man can continue his school career in a more peaceful way. A difficult path that has shaped Bassette, who has since become a professional footballer: “What I have seen and experienced has taught me to grow up faster than the others.”