If footballers are as appalled by racist insults as they claim, their attitude to complaining about it to referees has got to change
Rio Ferdinand was right about one thing. Enter a conversation with Sepp Blatter and you step into sitcom material. The bit where the Fifa president said: "The 'black man' as you call him has a name: Tokyo Sexwale," was pure comedy gold, unintentionally funnier than most scripts devised to make people laugh, even with the knowledge that Tokyo is not actually Gabriel Sexwale's given name but a moniker derived from the South African millionaire's fondness for karate.
Not much of the rest of the story was funny, and Ferdinand made that point very well too, so well that Blatter ended up apologising profusely and admitting that he had been taught a useful lesson. That, as Sexwale said, was quite big of him, and though it would be infinitely better if the most popular sport on the planet was not headed up by an out-of-touch geriatric with a propensity for clownish gaffes ? imagining women in tighter shorts, sending a World Cup to Qatar, suggesting racial insults were so slight a matter they could be brushed under the carpet with a post-match handshake ? the Fifa track record on anti-racism is actually quite impressive.
While Blatter himself may have made enough enemies in this country to last a lifetime, following his handling of last year's World Cup vote, his organisation does not deserve to be pilloried for rebarbative attitudes. No one who has attended games at any professional level in recent years can have formed the impression that the matter of racist or discriminatory behaviour was one the authorities were doing their best to ignore. Modern football is rigorously, publicly, almost religiously inclusive, as it needs to be to be played around the world and devoured by a global television audience.
That is precisely why so many were disappointed with Blatter's off-message remarks, and in any normal situation an executive figure seen to be so demonstrably out of kilter with the aims and good name of his organisation would by now be considering his position. Normal behaviour is not what we have come to expect from Fifa or its president, however, and if there are those within the hierarchy who have been made uncomfortable by the events of the past few days, they should remember how uncomfortable the outside world felt when Blatter was re-elected for a fourth term this year, at the age of 75 and still surrounded by scandals, because his was the only name on the ballot paper. It is wholly unsurprising that most footballers regard international HQ as a remote, illogical, unfathomable law unto itself, though when Ferdinand said as much on Twitter, at least Blatter popped up to answer back.
The only other thing that can be said in Blatter's favour this week, and this may have to be whispered for fear of the imminent arrival of men in white coats, is that he was on the right lines in arguing that accusations of racism ought to be dealt with on the pitch. Expecting a handshake to do the trick was obviously an over-simplistic solution to an extremely complex and difficult problem, because as we have seen in the two cases going on in this country, agreement about anything said or supposed to have been said is almost impossible to reach. It does not take a great deal of imagination to work out that if Player A complains to the referee that Player B has racially abused him, Player B will put on a saintly expression and claim he did not do it. Footballers do that when they are accused of fouling an opponent, even when putting the ball out for a throw-in to the other side they deny all responsibility, so they are hardly likely to fess up on the spot to a much more serious charge.
Yet if the alternative is lengthy FA investigations, or, worse still, lengthy FA investigations made lengthier still by the police getting involved, football has little choice but to try to put its house in order. Though the referee ought to be the first judge of unsporting behaviour on the pitch, despite all the photographs of Andre Marriner attempting to intercede in the running argument between Luis Su�rez and Patrice Evra at Anfield the accusations of racism only emerged after the event, via French television. No formal complaint was made to the referee during play, only afterwards when Evra went to the referee's room with his manager as support. It is not difficult to understand why that may be, now that Gus Poyet has helpfully offered his view that Evra is a cry baby and that players should simply put up with whatever insults come along.
A referee cannot merely accept one player's word on a subject so sensitive in any case, and nor should he if all manner of false accusations and mischievous mishearings are to be avoided, but a procedure should be in place by now whereby a player can at least register his concerns with the match official. The referee could then remind the offending player of his responsibilities, offering him a chance to reflect on his behaviour and perhaps to change it, and would be in a better position to keep an eye on how the situation progressed through the rest of the game.
This would not make the problem disappear in the blink of an eye, or even a handshake at the end of the game, but it would be a start to dealing with the matter on the pitch and not having to reconstruct events several days later. Presumably it was the fear of being seen as a cry baby or a whinger that prevented Evra from taking his grievance to Marriner until it was too late for the referee to do anything about it. If football and footballers are as appalled by racist insults as they have spent the past few days insisting, that attitude has to change.
Every case is different, and general principles are not easy to apply, but the issue is unlikely to go away as long as both parties choose to remain coy about it. You would have to be exceptionally generous to form the view that that was what Blatter was clumsily trying to say all along, but he has apologised and we are approaching the season of goodwill to old men.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2011/nov/19/acceptance-of-cry-babies-racism
Ricard Blidstrand Severin Blindenbacher Jonathon Blum Andrew Bodnarchuk
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