Wednesday, October 17th, 2012 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. 800,000 visits last month

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Making the Arsenal

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By Tony Attwood

Senegal have been disqualified from the Africa Cup of Nations 2013 after a crowd riot ended the play off against the Ivory Coast.  According to reports  stones, bottles and fireworks were thrown on to the pitch and tear gas was used against the crowd.

The fact that as a result Gervinho will be missing from Arsenal early next year is trivial and unimportant compared to the violence, and the disqualification seems justified – at least looking in from another continent.

Clubs and countries have to keep their supporters safe and controlled, and failure to do so is a serious matter.

But clubs and countries also have to ensure that players and fans are not abused through racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic chanting and this they fail to do.  They fail in Europe, and sadly on occasions they fail here.

I have written so many times about the abject failure of the League, the club officials of Tottenham and Portsmouth, and the police, to deal with the homophobic events at a Portsmouth v Tottenham game, that I really can’t go through the details again.   But I continue to make the point: we are not pure in the UK.

By this I don’t mean just that we still have racists, homophobes, anti-Semites etc etc, I mean that we still don’t have the will to deal with such matters.

And perhaps the biggest failing of all is that the football authorities and clubs in the UK continue to deal with Fifa and Uefa who themselves utterly fail to deal with the problem.

Being an Arsenal fan I don’t like Ashley Cole, but that does not stop me believing that he has an absolute right to expect those who perpetrate racism against him to be punished, and for action to be taken to stop it again.  Fining Slovakia £18k in 2002 for such incidents showed Uefa was just going through the motions.

Ditto Macedonia in 2003 – a £16.5k fine.   Alan Green (of whom I do not always have good things to say) said he could identify some of the people who were involved in the abuse.   Uefa did not take up his offer.  I have often wondered whether Mr Green really did send in his information to Uefa.

So we go on.  £16.5k fine to Serbia in 2007, £10k to Croatia in 2008, and a sudden upturn to £34k against Bulgaria in 2011, while Rangers got £35k for sectarianism chanting last year, but Uefa went back down to £16k against Porto this year.

Russia and Spain (a country that in part at least is in denial about racism as I reported yesterday) were fined around £20k each in June.

When we compare this with Mr Wenger being given a 3 match ban and a £33k find for confronting the ref in the Milan match, it looks stupid.  Man City got £24k fine for coming out late for the second half – and right at the top of the league Nic Bendtner got an £80k fine for “unauthorised sponsorship” – which of course reminds us of how Fifa officials got a bunch of ladies locked up in a South African jail for the same offence.

Now Danny Rose has been sent off for goodness knows what after being abused through a match – and we expect another £20k fine.

The FA says: “The FA condemns both the scenes of racism and the confrontation at the final whistle during which time our players and staff were under extreme provocation. The FA has reported a number of incidents of racism to Uefa following the fixture. These were seemingly aimed at a number of England black players by the crowd. The matter is now with Uefa.”

At least in England we are trying to get to grips with the issue, although not always comfortably.  But Luis Suárez-Patrice Evra and John Terry have been dealt with.  Meanwhile Sepp Blatter says that racist remarks and gestures during a game could be dealt with at the end by the players shaking hands.  Our approach and his could not be further apart.

Personally, I think it is time for the clubs of this country, the Premier League and the FA to act.   They should write to Uefa and Fifa and give notice that unless they take serious and clear action to stop racism, homophobic chanting and other unacceptable behaviour then England will resign from Fifa, and the Premier League clubs will pull out of Uefa competition.

Would such a threat be taken seriously?  I suspect not – at first – but that once the clubs did it, there would be perhaps one season without England in European and World football, and then action would follow.

Yes, we would sacrifice a season – maybe two – but let us not forget that after Liverpool fans rioted in the Heysel Stadium disaster of 1985 all English clubs were banned until 1990 from all European club competitions.

Of course you can argue that many people died that day in Belgium, and that no one has died as a result of racist chanting (although many have died because of what follows).   And yes there is a scale of things – but racism, homophobia and related behaviour must be tackled in a civilised society, and if Uefa and Fifa won’t act, then we must.

Where is the resistance to Uefa and Fifa?

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