As long as I've been doing this blog, and as long as I've been paying attention to soccer, and all the trouble that surrounds soccer, I have never seen real measures taken against racism.
No one likes that racism is a constant part of soccer, and no one likes that racially charged incidents make the news more than the results of games.
FIFA has consistently made attempts to try and contain racism, which is a daunting task, but the punishments have varied.
Some seem like a slap on the wrist: a fine for the team involved. The police often get involved with the individuals and enforce the law.
Some are more severe: close the stadium for fans of the team, forcing the team to play in an empty arena.
But overall, there hasn't been anything that has really stopped these sort of things from happening, and the teams and international federations have not been able to really do much of anything except lay down punishment when something happens.
It seems like that is changing.
Yes, for the first time in recent memory, FIFA is being more proactive in this field.
First of all, Sepp Blatter, the President of FIFA, has said recently that he has ideas on how to end the discrimination, saying that one possibility is to "... deduct points, relegate a team [to a lesser division]...The moment we have the courage to do that discrimination will end."
That's a big leap. From fining the team involved to deducting points or relegating them? That's huge.
I like it.
That's what they need. This is something that they need to be willing to do. Come down hard. Encourage the clubs to be proactive as well. Granted, when something happens, clubs are pretty good about it (for example, a Villareal fan threw a banana at Barcelona's Dani Alves, who picked it up and took a bite before proceeding with the game. Villareal banned the man who threw it from their stadium for life as soon as they found who it was), but being proactive to prevent this happening in the first place is worthwhile.
FIFA also is going to start penalizing clubs and federations if they don't take action to fight the racism. For example, FIFA decided in 2013 to make a rule saying that federations could deduct points from clubs for incidents like this. Not a single federation has exercised this rule.
One federation official, from CONCACAF (North and Central America), said he is going to set up a hotline so people can report racial incidents directly and submit evidence.
Italy's federation has started a new anti-racism campaign, which will take off at their international game against England. They have secured former Olympian Fiona May to head the campaign and will have various Italian players as well.
This is good. It's also a promising flip flop from when coaches and officials have said that racism does not exist in soccer. Finally, FIFA and the federations are taking action before anything happens: telling each other to enforce the rules and prevent things from happening.
I know there is no screen you can run beforehand to prevent racists from entering the stadiums. But if they know that if they do something, their team will essentially lose a game, they won't do it.
This is going to help. Maybe we'll start hearing less and less about these racially- charged incidents.
Maybe something will finally change. We're on the right track.
Finally.
CITED
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/03/04/390707630/is-fighting-racism-in-soccer-a-lost-cause-fifa-president-says-no
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-05/fifa-plans-to-penalize-soccer-federations-for-racism-inaction
http://www.foxsports.com/soccer/story/former-olympian-may-to-front-italian-soccer-s-new-anti-racism-campaign-032915
No comments:
Post a Comment