Fifa announces hard line on football racism

The Editor — Fri, March 17th 2006

Scottish and Spanish FA's likely to be the firing line

Fifa has reacted to the apparent inability of national football associations to deal with racism by announcing that it plans to enforce sanctions on consistently offending clubs.

Clubs will receive a 3 point deduction for a first offence, 6 points for a second, and potentially relegation for a subsequent offence. Other penalties could include disqualifications from contests.

Spanish football has been in the headlines recently for abuse African player of the year Samuel Eto’o received that prompted him to threaten to walk off.

Another of the European countries that might be most affected is Scotland, whose rivallry between its top 2 clubs, Celtic and Rangers, often results in sectarian chanting.

Listed in: Countries, Scotland, Spain

Comments

There’s a possible problem with this solution, I feel: fans of clubs battling to avoid relegation could (in theory) go to matches, chant racist abuse, and get points docked from their rivals.

Why not inflict huge fines against clubs where this sort of thing happens (as opposed to the insulting, pathetic fine of 9,000 Euros Zaragoza received for fans racially abusing Eto’o twice in two seasons). I’m sure that the club president/owner/directors will then take note!

The Fan