SHOWING RACISM A RED CARD

The abuse of players, officials and fans because of their skin color, nationality, religion or ethnicity is what is termed as racism in the association of football. These individuals are usually targeted because of their relation with an opposing team.

There have been many incidents during matches when fans turn against players of their own and the opposing team and also player to player confrontations are on the rise as far as the fight against racism is on. These situations make the players, officials and other participants feeling uneasy during and after matches.

 In English football, many cases have been reported to the Football Association (FA) concerning the matter and the FA has tried its best to take correct measures on the culprits caught but the persistence still remains significant in the country.

The highest profiled confrontation in the English league on the race attack include the 15^th October 2011 investigation on Liverpool’s Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez where he was accused of racially abusing Manchester United’s French left-back Patrice Evra. Liverpool had to give support to their attacker even after the FA declared that they intended to charge Suarez. The FA disciplinary panel on their 7-days hearing found Suarez guilty of abusing Evra and he was fined € 40,000 and banned him from playing eight matches.

You may think that English players in the premier league, England’s and the world’s most adored football league are excluded from punishments of those shameful acts. Since the league was established, many have been accused.

Recently, the former England captain who is also Chelsea’s captain, John Terry was caught on tape racially abusing Queens Park Rangers’ Anton Ferdinand at Loftus Road in a match between the Rangers and Chelsea.

After the tape was presented to the FA disciplinary committee, they reacted by striping Terry the  England captaincy a decision that led to the then England manager, Fabio Capello quit the managerial role in protest to the FA for not consulting him on their verdict  on his captain.

An investigation was started and on 13^th July 2012, the 31-year old was tried at Westminster Magistrates court where he was found not guilty and he was cleared off the charges of racism. The chief Magistrate Howard Riddle said that he had enough evidence showing the innocence of the Chelsea veteran. This did not prevent the FA who were conducting their own investigation on Terry and in a four-day hearing they found him guilty of using abusive language and was fined €220,000 and four match ban guarantying him an appeal within 14 days which he didn’t appeal but decided to end his international career stating that the FA made his position in the national team untenable.

Fans have been also caught on the wrong side with their racism chants and recently during the Euro 2012, Croatian football federation was fined 80,000 Euros after their national team supporters racially abused Italy’s striker Mario Balotelli.

A report submitted to British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) by the House of Commons, states that racism still remains a significant problem in English football and the whole world despite improvements in recent years have been made.

In a panel by the culture, media and sports committee in England, a joint statement from the  FA,the premier league and the football league said that substantial progress had been made to curb the problem but admitted that challenges were still there and remarked that they will consider the committee’s recommendations which include; extra training for stewards, state clearly how to report incidents of abusive, use of social media to speak out against incidents of abuse and discrimination and also ensuring prosecutions take place at grassroots level.

The color of the skin of a person should not matter because it is disgusting when disgracing a human being. Racism in football is not dead but a weed that finds its growing roots after being uprooted and football’s top governing bodies, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) and The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) should take stronger leadership on tackling the dilemma.