[COLOR=Red]LATEST:[/COLOR] Serie A and Coppa Italia games this week are all to start five minutes late to protest against racism among fans which again provoked ugly incidents at the weekend.
"Italian football is against racism and we will press this point home from Tuesday with this initiative which will bring together coaches, officials, players and referees," the Italian football federation (FIGC) said in a statement.
Riddled by racist taunts and chants for years, the problem surfaced again during Sunday's league game in Sicily between Messina and Inter Milan. The home side' African defender Marc Zoro was reduced to tears after being subjected to racial abuse by the visiting fans. The Ivory Coast international was targetted when he went to collect the ball near the away supporters' section and after a chorus of monkey chants he decided he would take no more part in the game.
Inter's Brazilian striker Adriano went over to console Zoro before he broke down in tears. Zoro's team-mates managed to then persuade him to play the remainder of the match and his decision was applauded by the Messina crowd.
National team manager Marcello Lippi also denounced the Inter Milan fans saying that they had "insulted human nature." "There is only one race and it is the human race," Lippi said, adding "sport should tear down barriers."
The campaign to confirm Italian football is against racism will start in tomorrow nights Coppa Italia tie between Milan and Brescia and continue all the way to Sunday evenings Serie A clash between Lecce and Roma. The players, managers and coaches of each team and the referees will display a banner with the words "NO to racism" in the centre circle.
This is one thing I feel very strongly about. The five minute silence at the beginning of this week's games is pointless, effects very few people and as rightly said before only piles more publicity and satisfaction onto the racists that do these things.
There are simple punishments for clubs with racist fans, but I think the FIGC knows and fears that if harsh punishments were inflicted it would effect nearly every team in Serie A and B. Nearly every team has a racist element or a right wing element.
Action taken against racism has to be worldwide and unilateral. It has to come from the top, and that means, in my opinion, getting someone with more guts than Sepp Blatter, the whole organisation (FIFA) needs to grow a spine.
I'm sure a lot of this has been said before, but it takes an incident like that involving Marco Zoro to bring it all back up again, and that is the real shame here.
Quite right, Duffman - the problem is that a number of big clubs (not just in Italy) would be in an awful lot of bother if FIFA or UEFA punished racist chanting. There are lots of things they could do (bans from European competition for the whole nation for a season; ground closures, clauses in TV contracts that clubs found guilty of racism will not be paid anything for the TV coverage, and in some instances will not be shown on TV at all for a certain period, etc, etc).
The thing is, of course, while there are plenty of things they could do, they won't.
Also, perhaps if sponsors turned round and said 'sorry, but we're not going to give money to a club which condones racism' you'd find that the power of the Ultras was suddenly not such an impossible thing to solve.
If you were Inter, and found that no-one was advertising at the ground and that you were having to wear kit that resembled the 1950s strip (no logos at all), would you let the fans have their fun, or start cracking down on them?
Again, won't happen. Rather cynically, I suspect that it'll take racist abuse of an African side at a World Cup to solve this, I fear. This will be based not on the morality of the issue but upon the influence that African federation votes have on FIFA positions - if Blatter thought that doing nothing would cost him his job, then you'd see the most draconian set of regulations introduced in a flash..
Too right Dave. Football is too political nowadays, the only time Blatter acts is when he's under pressure and whilst I wouldn't like to see large scale racist abuse at a World Cup game I, like you, fear this is what it would take to wake the world up. An interesting thought - what if the FIFA president was black?
The problem is what can we do as the real fans? We have no power. Football is a game for the masses, controlled by FIFA, dominated by the players and ruined by the idiots. Unfortunately the fans are somewhere at the bottom of the pile. Many of us feel appalled by racist behaviour and I for one am ashamed that people still have to live with it. Alledgedly Adriano and Martins were telling Zoro that they got it all the time and they just put up with it. Why should they? At the end of their day they are doing their job. In a normal workplace racial abuse would not be tolerated. People would be sacked and the police would be involved. Guess it goes to show how removed from the real world football is.
It's quite remarkable how many drunken, violent yobs there are in supposedly civilized European nations. Forgive me for saying so, but it's almost a relief to see England isn't the only sufferer of this social disease. Anyone with any heart whatsoever would feel for that African player. May they be sentenced to death by burning, may they roast, slowly, alive and may their soul's burn eternally. I'd ban European countries from competitions personally. None of the big guys have done anything worthwhile in recent competitions so we probably wouldn't miss them anyway. Spain, England, Germany, Italy, France...fook 'em all I say!
Originally posted by Bracey: Crying, however, or kicking up a big fuss is the worst thing to do because it heaps satisfaction upon the loonies who do it.
So what should he do, carry on like nothing has happened?
I suppose he just did what came naturally. Maybe it didn't heap satisifaction on the loonies, maybe some of them saw how far they had actually pushed a man, regret having done it and will think twice before doing it again and now actually feel like the outcasts that they are.
I would personally support a walk out by any player, or the the whole team, racially abused. Only drastic action like that would make the authorities sit up and apply relevant santions.
Originally posted by Bracey: Crying, however, or kicking up a big fuss is the worst thing to do because it heaps satisfaction upon the loonies who do it.
So what should he do, carry on like nothing has happened?
Action has to be taken by the team itself. I could see opposing fans "setting" up a team to get them fined, or thrown out of competitions. How can you prove which fans it was? Or are they true fans of the team at all?
It takes the team and the fans of the team itself to point out the dimwits and ban them from games and tickets.
Originally posted by Duffman: I see your point Bracey. But why should he? Why should he put up with it? Doesn't he have the right to play football without being racially abused.
Yes, of course. Just report it quietly to the referee and the authorities afterwards where they should make an example of the offenders.
Originally posted by Duncan!: Action has to be taken by the team itself. I could see opposing fans "setting" up a team to get them fined, or thrown out of competitions. How can you prove which fans it was? Or are they true fans of the team at all?
It takes the team and the fans of the team itself to point out the dimwits and ban them from games and tickets.
Jolly good point, Duncan.
I've been told about times in the 1970s when fans of a home side started singing the songs for the away team, see who would join in and beat the living daylights out of them (prior to segregation of fans). The fact is, you don't know who is doing it because it can be disguised easily.
Originally posted by Bracey: Yes, of course. Just report it quietly to the referee and the authorities afterwards where they should make an example of the offenders.
He shouldn't have to just carry on. Their are certain things that players have evry right to take a sudden stand to mid-match and this is one of them.
It's not easy to just carry on when you are being treated like an animal i would imagine, hence his dramatic reaction. Thats the whole point Bracey, who couldn't just carry on, he had finally had enough! He was put through a torrid time at Lazio at the start of the season and was said to be visibly upset at the end of the match in the tunnel.
Originally posted by .Dave.: There are lots of things they could do (bans from European competition for the whole nation for a season; ground closures, clauses in TV contracts that clubs found guilty of racism will not be paid anything for the TV coverage, and in some instances will not be shown on TV at all for a certain period, etc, etc).
Also, perhaps if sponsors turned round and said 'sorry, but we're not going to give money to a club which condones racism' you'd find that the power of the Ultras was suddenly not such an impossible thing to solve.
Good post,if the clubs who have clean records also were to be banned then fans wil realise that it`s everyone`s problem.Look what happened in England,would anyone want to suffer that again?
Unfortunately for myself I`ve read articles that claim Lazio condone racism,and it has scared some investors away and possibly some players. Recently since the decline of the club the spotlight moves on further away to other big clubs like Real and Inter so I notice a sort of hypocritical blind eye turned towards Verona for example because they`re out of the spotlight.Out of sight out of danger.
Have mixed feelings about two things regarding this issue. First there has been a call for the referees to abandon games in which they detect racist chanting. Impossible and dangerous. The referee has the job of maintaining the rules of the game on and around the pitch. He is not an arbiter of social justice beyond the perimeter of the fence. Secondly, players should walk off the pitch/refuse to play. Totally unenforcable and could lead to chaos as teams claim to detect racist chanting when losing or opposing fans act on behalf of home fans etc. This is a social problem that can be eradicated by the Italian state if it chooses. We have the technology to identify troublemakers in huge crowds, all tickets into matches are now named and if action is taken it will isolate and weed out the cancerous minority who taint our game.
5 minute delays, banners against racism etc are not a waste of time. They are about as much power as FIGC can legally excercise. As a symbolic action it unites the vast majority of football fans against Racism and gets this issue on the front pages again.
Has anyone got any more information on the action that the Treviso players took one season. One of their players was the target of racial abuse by a section of the Treviso ultras. In response the whole team turned out one Sunday with their faces "blacked up". It might have been clumsy but their point was made.
The way forward has to be charging towards the stands in Selhurst Park kung-fu kicking style.
Some papers were eager to differentiate between bad name calling and racist chants because Cantona was white so it wasn`t racism.
So you see the problem lies deeply rooted in society yet football is still promoted as the family game.Not true,when the game financially collapses and the family fans stray away they`ll welcome the type of fans that weren`t wanted a few years back because they didn`t deal with them properly when the good times rolled.
How much for Ballack? Cragnotti would have slapped 27mil down
