(Football news) FIFA disciplinary committee yesterday ordered Hungary to play their next match against Albania behind closed doors, with the a second game suspended for a probationary two years over monkey chants and missiles aimed at the English players during England's 4-0 win over them at the beginning of the month. The Hungarian Football federation was also fined a minimal sum of 158k Swiss Francs. Hungary were already serving a two match stadium ban by UEFA for racist and homophobic chants and banners at their pervious matches in European Competitions.
FIFA and UEFA both need to rectify their racism banning rules. In a sport which is culturally so rich and people from different races, religions, colours unite together to watch the beautiful game, there should be no tolerance towards racism. Football is a sport which has its own beauty where people unite together and spread happiness or sometimes help express their different emotions on and off the pitch. These emotions sometimes get out of hand, fans tend to racially abuse players based on their colour, gender and their backgrounds which needs to be stopped and the fans need to educate themselves about these sensitive topics. No player deserves to be ostracized based on their skin colour and hereditary background.
The lack of common sense prevails amongst these racist fans as players and leagues have taken necessary steps to educate these fans by taking the knee and wearing Black Lives Matter jerseys but it seems like people still lack that basic humanity. The only solution to this problem is by taking extreme police actions against these people because banning them from stadiums won’t stop them from racially abusing anyone.
Recently Marcos Alonso stated that he won’t no longer take the knee as he believes the gesture is “losing a bit of strength”, he will instead opt to wear an anti racism badge on his shirt before kick off. A decision that might raise a few eyebrows but in all honesty some fans all over the world are still not getting the point and still persist with racial slurs. It is the people’s mentality that needs to be changed rather than the pre match antics, schools and colleges need to educate the people and make the masses aware that being racist is a ‘crime’.
Piara Powar, executive director of the FARE Network, which operates both organisation’s of anti-discrimination systems, welcomed a “renewed determination to punish racism” from the former.
But he added: “If all Hungarian offences had been taken into account, they would be facing exclusion from the World Cup, and remedial measures would have been put in place. There should be better coordination between confederations, such as Uefa, and Fifa.
“In this case, Uefa should have asked Fifa to apply their previous sanction and the Hungary vs. England match played behind closed doors. An administrative loophole has allowed racism to flourish”
