FIFA president, Sepp Blatter said yesterday that racial insults on the soccer field are nothing more than “on-field provocation”. He also suggested that players should accept this as part of the game and simply shake hands at the end of the match.
I was actually trying to think of something sarcastic to insert here, but I’m weeping too hard for humanity at the moment.
Here is Sepp’s brilliant reasoning in a CNN interview:
Maybe one of the players has a word, a gesture, towards the other which is not the correct one. But the one who is affected by that, he should say, it’s a game, we are in a game, and at the end of the game we should shake hands. On the field of play, sometimes you say something which is not very correct. At the end of the game, it is over and you have the next game where you can behave better.
In case you think the CNN journalist misheard him somehow, no, you’d be mistaken. He made similar comments during an Al Jazeera interview, adding:
Racism is not a major problem in the game. Racism is if there are spectators, or there are movements of discrimination off the field of play, but on the field, I deny there is racism. You may say something to somebody who does not exactly look like you….but at the end of the match it’s forgotten.
After he made the comments, Manchester United and England defender Rio Ferdinand, took to his Twitter account:
I feel stupid for thinking that football was taking a leading role against racism.
Don’t worry Rio, we fell the same.
[Source: EWN]
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