News in 2006

24th February 2006

FIFA introduces World Cup anti-racism days

Fifa has declared that the two days on which the World Cup quarter-finals take place will be official tournament anti-racism days.

Berlin, Hamburg, Gelsenkirchen and Frankfurt will be hosting matches over the weekend of June 30 and July 1 and the move is in a bid to force the sport to take the problem seriously.

The move has been welcomed by campaigners including Labour MEP, Glyn Ford who said: "Recent events in Spain and Italy have shown that football racism is not confined to one country, or one problem group of fans.

"Without Fifa's backing, it is difficult to get clubs to take anti-racism seriously. Fifa has shown that it is prepared to throw its weight behind tackling racism at every level of the game."

Mr Ford, a member of the sports and anti-racism intergroups in the European Parliament and national treasurer of the Anti-Nazi league, went on: "I welcome Fifa's decision to give the anti-racist message the highest prominence during the World Cup.

"Football is the great international language, uniting nations and peoples. There is no place for the ugly face of racism that demeans the individual and isolates millions of fans.

"I will be contacting both Fifa and the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism to offer Labour MEPs support and to make sure that anything the European Parliament can do to make the campaign more effective will be done."