It has been 8 days since the issue of racism within football was thrust firmly into the public eye when England Under-21’s Danny Rose was the target of monkey chants and missiles thrown from the crowd. But this wasn’t the end of the nation’s interest in this issue; press coverage has only intensified in the last week.
England’s Under-21 game in Serbia seems to have merely acted as the catalyst for further debate on the issue of racial abuse. Here is what’s happened in the tumultuous week that followed...
Most notably, Reading striker Jason Roberts makes a stand. Stating that he is unhappy with the progress that the FA have made with their ‘Kick It Out’ campaign and claiming that the FA had ignored a plan to combat racism that he had submitted to them numerous times. Roberts refused to warm up in the Kick It Out t-shirts that his fellow players up and down the country were scheduled to wear.
Forget Serbia, Roberts was disappointed with the perceived lack of progress that the FA had made with tackling racism in this country. And it soon became apparent that he wasn’t alone in this opinion. Other high profile players joined him in his protests, including Micah Richards, Kenwyne Jones, Joleon Lescott and Rio & Anton Ferdinand. Despite these protests eventually being relatively widespread, it was Rio Ferdinand who hit the headlines.
Rio, as well as the press, had been informed by Sir Alex Ferguson that the Manchester United manager did not see the need to protest against Kick It Out. “The union is stronger than any individual” stated Ferguson as he suggested that solidarity was the best form of attack on racism, not individuals breaking away.
He went on to categorically state that Ferdinand would be wearing the Kick It Out shirt like the rest of his team. This is what put Rio in the headlines, he went ahead with his protest regardless of what his manager wanted. This sort of thing happens to other managers, but not Fergie.
Rio Ferdinand was allegedly ‘rested’ for United’s Champions League game on Tuesday night. Only Sir Alex and Rio really know why Ferdinand didn’t feature against SC Braga but it could be some time before we find out what repercussions Ferdinand could face from his boss, if any.
In the midst of all of this press coverage it would have been easy to miss that Lazio were fined £32,500 by UEFA for their fans racist chanting towards Tottenham Hotspur’s Jermain Defoe, Aaron Lennon and Andros Townsend in their Europa League game last month.
UEFA are under the microscope after the Serbia incident. The relatively small fines they have a history of distributing for race-based offences has drawn the ire of many. And the £32,500 they asked of Lazio won’t do much to satisfy those who doubt that they are taking this issue seriously.
UEFA did not respond to me last week when I asked for an explanation of the figures they fined offending nations.
So, on to John Terry. Whether rightly or wrongly, John Terry has been labelled as a proverbial ‘poster boy’ for the football/racism problem this country faces. This week, really through no fault of his own, Terry made the headlines as Chelsea announced that he would remain as their captain and leader (their words) in the wake of the 4 match ban he received for comments he directed at Anton Ferdinand.
To add an interesting closing paragraph to this story, Terry was requested to wear a captains armband sporting the slogan ‘Unite Against Racism’ during Chelsea’s Champions League game this week. The fact that Terry is also currently serving a domestic ban for racist comments made this quite the talking point.
So, that’s an extremely brief summary of what has happened. All of the above is what has kept this issue fresh and in the news for the last week. While it has normally taken something negative to get press coverage for this issue, the coverage itself can only be a positive. Awareness of an issue is required for its eventual eradication. So with that in mind, here is the result of this unprecedented week of news. The PFA’s 6 Point Plan.
PFA Chief Gordon Taylor outlined the plan, aimed at tackling racism in the game, earlier today.
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Speeding up the process of punishing racist abuse.
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Harsher penalties for racist abuse, including equality awareness programmes for the offenders.
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Assurances that a certain number of applicants from minority backgrounds will be interviewed for coaching positions.
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The proportion of black managers or coaches within the game to be closely monitored.
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Racial abuse to be outlined as 'Gross Misconduct' in all player contracts, giving a club the power to sack anyone found guilty of racist behaviour.
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To not lose sight of other equality issues such as gender, sexual orientation, disability, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and Asians in football.
All nice ideas, point 6 especially could become crucial. Race is the hot topic at the moment, but discrimination may run far beyond just race. Statistics suggest that anywhere between 5 and 25 Premier League footballers would likely be homosexual. Currently the percentage of out-gay footballers stands firmly at zero. Next year’s battle? Could be.
But anyway, as has become all too evident over the last week, it’s not about what rules or sanctions you have in place, it’s about how you implement them. Racism is already a punishable offence in football yet the problems persist.
Anton and Rio Ferdinand have tonight publicly backed the PFA as well as the FA, confirming in a joint statement “we are committed to working with football’s existing organisations towards the betterment of the game and to achieve immediate action”.
It would be easy to argue that nobody has garnered more column inches than the Ferdinand brothers during the debate on this issue. So their backing of the existing organisations is extremely high profile and that added attention can only be a good thing. When it comes to awareness of racism within football, the more the better.
And there you have it. That was the week when football’s problems with race hit the forefront of everyone’s mind. It’s likely to be seen as a week the footballing world will want to forget, not one of our greatest achievements. That is unless it goes down as the beginning of the resolution of the problems that blight our game so. We can only hope it is.
And I can only hope that next week there is something within football to write about other than racism.