This Tuesday, Manchester City’s U-21 side stormed off the
pitch during an international friendly against Croatian team HNK Rijeka. A Man City player, Seko Fofana claimed that
he had been racially abused by an opponent, prompting Man City skipper Patrick Vieira
to pull his side from the match. The
Croatian club immediately denied the racial abuse however the Croatian Football
Federation has launched an investigation into the claims. The allegations occurred immediately after
Fofana was sent off for a late challenge, which Rijeka claim is the real reason
that the team withdrew.
“It looks like a move which is trying to hide a very ugly
foul by the Manchester City player that resulted in exclusion, followed by a
hasty and illogical decision of the coaching staff…” said Rijeka manager Ranko
Buketa. However, if these allegations
prove to be true, Rijeka could be facing some serious sanctions from soccer’s
governing body. And not in an unprecedented
manner…
Unfortunately, racism in soccer has been a growing problem
in recent years especially for Manchester City.
In October of last year, forward Yaya Toure claimed that he was racially
abused during a CSKA Moscow game, an allegation later found to be true. The Toure and Fofana claim are 2 of 4 claims
of racism that have turned out to be true in the past 4 years. Former City striker Mario Balotelli is another player that has been the target of racial abuse in his career; sometimes at the hands of fans of his own fans.
The incidents continue to highlight a worrying trend in
soccer. Despite UEFA and other governing
bodies doing their best with anti-racism campaigns and advertisements, people
with deep seated biases continue to grow more vocal. The graphs below show two
worrying statistics for racism in soccer fans.
In the study, published by MyGov.com, 91% of English soccer
fans believe that racism exists in soccer in their country, but of those same
fans polled, only 43% said that they felt racism was a serious problem. Not to pick on the English fans specifically, make sure to look at the above polls and see the shocking numbers of major European nations. This just starts to demonstrate the uphill
battle that soccer’s governing body is facing with fans, this ingrained racism
that unfortunately has trickled down even to the youth teams, illustrated by
this latest incident if it proves to be true.
The question now becomes what more can be done to fight this problem,
because obviously, what we’ve been doing so far isn’t enough.
Find the entire YouGov article here.
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