News in 2006
10th April 2006
Ugly side of the beautiful game
Football pitches have never been the most harmonious of places, but finally the world of soccer is taking a tough stance against racism on the field.
Modern society continues to wrestle with discrimination in attitudes and actions, but few would disagree with the right of footballers to play their game without being subject to racist chants and insults.
The world's football governing body Fifa has now announced that it will adopt strict sanctions, such as match suspensions, point deductions and relegation, to be imposed after incidents of racism on the pitch.
This landmark decision is the fruit of the labours of Northamptonshire Euro MP Chris Heaton-Harris, who has led the campaign for clear rules and punishments to deal with football racism.
It is the latest of county links in the evolution of racial equality in football. In 1910 Walter Tull made history by signing with Northampton Town Football Club as the UK's first black outfield player, following goalkeeper Arthur Wharton 14 years earlier.
He said: "I was dreadful at playing so I started refereeing at 14 and have been ever since. Ray Lewis, who was refereeing at the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, got me into it; he was my dad's best mate.
"I have never had an incident where players have said to me 'so and so's made a racist comment' but I do know referees who have had it happen to them and it's horrible for the player."
Around six years ago Fifa announced that players who made racist comments should be sent off.
"Ever since then people have been taking it more and more seriously," Mr Heaton-Harris said.
Now the county MEP has got a result that could lead to a major change in the way abusive comments and gestures are dealt with at world football matches.
"I'm delighted because it's taken quite some time," he said.
"I hope we never see any punishment follow from it, but it will be very interesting to see how incidents and potential problems are dealt with at the World Cup. If it does happen, it'll be huge shame for the game."
A record number of MEPs signed a European Parliament written declaration against football racism last month, which has been followed by Fifa's intention to change its disciplinary code.
The chain of events that led to all this started after Shaun Wright-Phillips and Ashley Cole were subjected to monkey taunts by Spain supporters at last year's friendly England match in Madrid.
Mr Heaton-Harris said: "After that I got in touch with the president of the Spanish football federation, but he didn't seem interested in cutting the problem out of the game.
"So as chairman of the Friends of Football group at the European Parliament, I was in contact with UEFA and held a two-day conference in Barcelona. Spain was specifically chosen so they could pick up best practice. But then at the end the Spanish representative stood up and said we mustn't make a mountain out of a molehill."
The 48-year-old politician realised that more would be needed to persuade football associations to take racism in football seriously and his Friends of Football group and the anti-discrimination committee, both within the European Parliament, got together to draft the declaration that was signed by 423 out of 723 MEPs
In it, the EP calls on UEFA (the Union of European Football Associations) and all other competition organisers in Europe to give referees the power to stop or abandon matches in the event of serious racist abuse.
It also called for sanctions on national football associations and clubs whose supporters or players carry out racial abuse.
England player Rio Ferdinand backed the motion, saying that UEFA had failed to acknowledge and deal with the problem of football racism. Both he and Mr Heaton-Harris criticised the £6,000 fine given to Zaragoza when Barcelona player Samuel Eto'o was racially abused.
Mr Heaton-Harris said: "It says to the fans that this is fine. It's not even pocket money to players, let alone clubs of that size."
The problem is particularly prevalent in Spain, Italy and some Eastern European countries.
Lazio striker Paolo Di Canio was banned for one game and fined 10,000 Euros last year for his raised-arm salute when he was substituted during a match against Juventus. Di Canio said he was "a fascist but not a racist".
Now Mr Heaton-Harris and the football world are waiting to see exactly how FIFA will change its disciplinary code to address concerns that racist abuse could, for example, be used to stop a game to the detriment of the winning team. He said: "There are problems out there. FIFA needs to say it is going to fine leagues and individual football associations if they do not take this seriously. The devil will be in the detail."
"League rules would have to be adjusted and each incident taken case by case so that the wrong team isn't penalised. There are ways to get around it."
It is hoped that new anti-racism rules will be drawn up in detail in time for this summer's World Cup so if the spectre of racism is raised at the tournament, it can be quickly stamped out.
With only two signed black players, Northampton Town FC do not have a wide range of ethnicities and skin colours on their team list.
But in the past the club have blazed a trail for bringing players from different heritages onto the football pitch. Walter Tull is probably the most famous Cobblers player of all time and he was the first black outfield player in the country.
Since then the club have worked in their own backyard to discourage racism in football, by sending coaches out to talk to youngsters in Northampton about it.
The Cobblers' head of media Gareth Willsher said: "I don't think it has ever been a major problem here. "It's something that groups on a national level are working hard to address and Tony Clarke, our general manager, is tackling strongly to see if the club can do any more.
"As a club we would support anything that helped remove racism from the game. It's more of a problem on the continent but we have not totally won the battle."
Despite all this, there are no Asian players at Sixfields and so few players in county leagues that a dedicated league was set up in Northampton last year. The town's Bangladeshi Association created the league specifically for Asian and ethnic minority men and there are Asians, West Indians and Romanians among the different teams.
League secretrary Abdul Latif said times were changing, but there still was racism in football.
"Asian players are not really going into teams in the mainstream leagues. I don't know why, perhaps they find it intimidating playing against other teams," he said.
Mr Latif said that Asian players were not playing league football until at least 16 years of age.
"They are falling behind other children who start playing at around seven or eight. I think Asian parents might feel a bit intimidated taking their children to play in football teams so they just don't," he said.
The popularity of the NBA league, which is made up of competing teams from Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes, shows that as many people want to play football as anything else. It is the only league like it in the region.
The creation of the league was prompted by race problems and confrontations in the past after an Asian team was disqualified from the Northants 92 League in the late 1990s.
Mr Latif said: "The lads saw racism there. There were fights, people called them names and abuse."
But doesn't a separate league for Asian and ethnic minority players lead to more segregation between different races in football?
Mr Latif said not, because their long term aim is to bring more young people into the game at an earlier age so they can join mainstream leagues when they are older. "Currently we are just working with adult players, just to make football more high profile. Hopefully in about five years we bring under-11s and then it'll really start to kick in," he said. "But it is changing. They are actually playing now. We hope in a few years to see them playing in the Northants 92 league and to do more coaching courses."
Source: Kettering Today
