Post by Scott on Jun 7, 2006 15:51:05 GMT
From The Times:
THE opening match of the World Cup on Friday is to be used by the football authorities to take a strict official stand against racism as a response to taunts against black players. The World Cup has five African teams: Angola, Tunisia, Ghana, Togo and Ivory Coast.
Particularly sensitive is the match in Leipzig on June 21 between Iran and Angola. German neo-Nazis are threatening demonstrations against the Angolans and today the African Council of Germany will meet to draw up a list of no-go areas in eastern Germany and offer safety guidelines for Africans wanting to visit Leipzig.
“What we have to do is appeal that there should be no racism,” Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, said yesterday. Football’s world governing body will discuss what form this appeal should take in a session in Munich this week.
Blatter has promised that captains of teams taking part in the quarter-finals will read out texts condemning racism, but according to Fifa sources, this could also feature in the opening ceremony in Munich, before Germany play Costa Rica.
Horst Köhler, the German President, has been asked to include a passage about racial discrimination in his speech to be delivered in the Munich stadium. And fans will hold up “Say No to Racism” banners.
The point is to set a new, more civilised tone in international football. Yet critics see the moves as a face-saving tactic after an about-turn by Blatter. Fifa, alarmed by the harassment of black players in club matches in Spain, Italy, Germany and Eastern Europe, announced tough action against racist behaviour in late March. Measures include five-match suspensions for offending players and officials, two-year stadium bans for fans, expanding the power of referees to abandon matches and annulling victories by teams whose fans had shouted abuse. Blatter said that these penalties would apply to the World Cup, but he has since backed down.
Anti-racism penalties could be realistically imposed only for behaviour on the pitch rather than on the terraces, he conceded. “Yes, if it is in the field of play, yes, if it is on the technical bench or by people who can be identified around the pitch,” he said. But, he added, because fans would often not be sitting in national contingents, it would be impossible to make a judgment on who was chanting abuse.
THE opening match of the World Cup on Friday is to be used by the football authorities to take a strict official stand against racism as a response to taunts against black players. The World Cup has five African teams: Angola, Tunisia, Ghana, Togo and Ivory Coast.
Particularly sensitive is the match in Leipzig on June 21 between Iran and Angola. German neo-Nazis are threatening demonstrations against the Angolans and today the African Council of Germany will meet to draw up a list of no-go areas in eastern Germany and offer safety guidelines for Africans wanting to visit Leipzig.
“What we have to do is appeal that there should be no racism,” Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, said yesterday. Football’s world governing body will discuss what form this appeal should take in a session in Munich this week.
Blatter has promised that captains of teams taking part in the quarter-finals will read out texts condemning racism, but according to Fifa sources, this could also feature in the opening ceremony in Munich, before Germany play Costa Rica.
Horst Köhler, the German President, has been asked to include a passage about racial discrimination in his speech to be delivered in the Munich stadium. And fans will hold up “Say No to Racism” banners.
The point is to set a new, more civilised tone in international football. Yet critics see the moves as a face-saving tactic after an about-turn by Blatter. Fifa, alarmed by the harassment of black players in club matches in Spain, Italy, Germany and Eastern Europe, announced tough action against racist behaviour in late March. Measures include five-match suspensions for offending players and officials, two-year stadium bans for fans, expanding the power of referees to abandon matches and annulling victories by teams whose fans had shouted abuse. Blatter said that these penalties would apply to the World Cup, but he has since backed down.
Anti-racism penalties could be realistically imposed only for behaviour on the pitch rather than on the terraces, he conceded. “Yes, if it is in the field of play, yes, if it is on the technical bench or by people who can be identified around the pitch,” he said. But, he added, because fans would often not be sitting in national contingents, it would be impossible to make a judgment on who was chanting abuse.
