Racism in football – a proper issue for UEFA/FIFA to tackle…
September 8th, 2009 | Author: Ash
Djibril Cisse is the latest black player in a long line to be subjected to racist abuse whilst playing football in Europe, during a friendly between Panathinaikos and rivals Olympiakos. It still amazes me to this day how someone’s skin tolerance to the sun can cause such behaviour.
Cisse was subjected to abuse throughout the game and alerted boss Henk Ten Cate and the referee, things kicked off when Cisse scored a goal and had bottles thrown at him. Rightly so Cisse threw one back and the referee ordered Ten Cate to substitute him otherwise he would be sent off.
The Daily Mail quoted Cisse as saying: ‘This has never happened to me before. I didn’t come to Greece for fans to react in this way and to make racist remarks whenever I get the ball. I became furious with all this.’
This story does not surprise me in the slightest and it’s time UEFA and FIFA crack down on this properly. For too many years clubs and countries across Europe have been able to get away with this, with only small fines being handed out.
Examples include;
-Luis Aragones referred to Thierry Henry as “that black shit” in 2005. Fined £2,000.
-England players being abused at the Bernabeu in a match against Spain. Spain fined £45,000.
-In Italy, Messina’s Ivory Coast defender Zoro threatened to halt a Serie A game in Italy in November 2005 after suffering racial abuse from visiting Inter Milan supporters.
-Emile Heskey subjected to monkey chants in Croatia when England won 4-1. Fined £15,000.
-Millwall fans taunt Carlton Cole with monkey chants and reportedly West Ham fans did the same to Millwall’s Jason Price just the other week.
-In 2004/05, Real Zaragoza were fined 600 euros by the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) after a section of their fans directed racist abuse at Barcelona forward, Samuel Eto’o. Athletico Madrid were also fined 600 euros by the RFEF for the racial abuse of Espanyol’s Cameroon goalkeeper Carlos Kameni in a league match. Deportivo Coruna, Albacete, and Getafe also received fines for similar incidents in their grounds.
-Espanyol fans even racial abuse their own players!
Racial abuse needs to be punished with automatic point deductions and being forced to play behind closed doors. If FIFA and UEFA really want to make a difference they need to stop fannying around with this diving and poaching bollocks and sort out this real problem.
If you have a few minutes spare this is an eye opener…
Though I doubt many of you have even got this far, sigh…
Related posts:
Need to sor tout both diving and racism. lenghty bans and point deductions would be an easy way to do this.
Wow the people who do the comentary are idiots. Can’t see Fifa abandoning matches.
Aragonas is a bellend
Yeah it seems ridiculous banning players for diving when there are much more serious problems in the game.
Point deductions seems the easiest way to do this to me, see how long it continues then.
Typical American over-journalism though. Germany 06 went off pretty much without a hitch I think?
I also hate how high and mighty the American’s get about racism in Europe, I mean, it’s not like there are any far right movements in America, right?
Eto’o got it from Barca fans in one game. Surprised he didnt leave the club earlier tbh after that.
ud never ever stop it. point deductions isnt the answer either, whats to stop arsenal fans dressing up as united fans and abusing an arsenal player, nothing to do with the man united fans but they get deducted points…
Well obviously it’s not a perfect solution but there would have to be an enquiry into the abuse which would have to come from more than one game and from more than a handful of renegade opposition fans
the way i see it is if there was a couple of opposition fans in the home stand chanting racist homophobic xenophobic and any-phobic chants then stewards can pick out these idiots and the club can punish it in house and with police.
what you see across europe is thousands in crowds dishing out this abuse so it ultimately is the club responsible which uefa/fifa should be responsible with dealing with.
giving out say 3 point deductions hits the club/country massively and so it would increase their willingness to control this sort of behaviour.
after all whats a 600 euro fine to a la liga side anyway…