Players Views

Sven Goran Eriksson

England coach

What would you say about racism?
First of all I'd say it is crazy it still exists nowadays. Unfortunately, I have seen it a lot of times. The last club I worked for was Lazio and some of the fans were racist. Black players for the opponents more or less always got abuse. It gave us very bad publicity and lots of problems. We tried to fight it as hard as we could.

What message would you give about racism?
Racism has nothing to do with football and it shouldn't exist in any country. What colour your skin is does not matter, what we want to see when we go to football is good football. We want to see a lot of goals being scored. Whether the person who scores the goals is black, yellow or white or red, does not matter. Enjoy the football. Myself as a manager, I never think about whether the player is black or white. I think, is he a good player? Colour shouldn't be important and for most people it isn't important at all.

Do you think it is important to be tolerant of different religions?
It does not matter if you are a Catholic or a Muslim, you must have the right to your beliefs. In our history, unfortunately religion has caused a lot of wars, and that's crazy. You could understand it a thousand years ago, but 2003? I can't understand it. Show Racism the Red Card is very important.