Racism rears its ugly head again in U21s match in Serbia

[EastStandBlue]

My alternative would be a lenghty ban now from all International competitions to give the Serbian FA time to get its domestic house in order(as happened with our own FA after Heysel).
Then points deduction for any future occurences.

You can't really compare Heysel, an incident which cost 39 people their lives and injured hundreds more, to incidents of racist behaviour, no matter how abhorrent that behaviour is. That's also a distinctly severe punishment to hand out to the ordinary fans of Serbian football who have decried the racism that occured that night. Punishments should escalate in severity with repetition, not descend.

 

[stoy_redstar]

Why, because fining the Serbian FA several million Euros would solve Racism once and for all? No, all it would do would be to ensure that the development of Serbian football would be put back and many people would lose their jobs as the Serbian FA would be forced to cut-back in order to pay the fine. It's very easy to highlight the paltry fine as a weakness in UEFA's disciplinary procedure without actually offering a better alternative.

Comparing the fine to Bendtner's is also a ridiculous exercise, as it completely removes the context from the two decisions. As a professional, Bendtner would've been told repeatedly that players can't advertise companies on their person for personal gain. He went and did it anyway, and the fine was that amount to ensure that Bendtner himself didn't gain financially for making that decision. If he was fined €20,000 but paid €80,000 for the stunt, then he's still profiting from UEFA's lackadaisical approach.

Forcing tSerbia to play one game behind doors, which is being overlooked by highlighting the fine, is the much more appropriate punishment as it punishes those actually guilty of the offence. What UEFA should now do is make the next punishment significantly more severe, perhaps a three point deduction from Serbia's qualification campaign and a suspended sentence of a one-tournament suspension to act as a three-strike rule. You'd soon see which fans would be prepared to act in such a barbaric manner, and more importantly they wouldn't be given a platform to voice their reprehensible intolerance.

spot on that, agree 100%

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

It looks highly likely than the one match ban will be increased on appeal.Good.
Either UEFA is serious about kicking racism out of international football or they're just paying lipservice to the idea(as with the current paltry one match ban for spectators).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/dec/14/michel-platini-appeal-racism-serbia-fine

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/dec/15/manchester-city-aleksandar-kolarov-albania-flag

Man.Cty's Serbian player Aleksander Kolarov gets involved in a spot of bother over the Albanian flag.

 

[Massimo Giovanni]

I lived for a few years in Serbia, FYROM and Kosovo in the early 2000s. Unless you have lived there you will not know the recent & 500 years of hatred. In their dirty wars both sides did awful things, head hunting, mass rape/murder and body organ people "farming". That is an explanation not an excuse or apology for them.

 

[MrB]

Definitely not racist/homophobic.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/dec/17/zenit-st-petersburg-fan-group

 

[chapperzUK]

Definitely not racist/homophobic.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/dec/17/zenit-st-petersburg-fan-group

"We're not racists but we see the absence of black players at Zenit as an important tradition,"

As soon as you hear or see those words it is a warning sign saying "WARNING! Potential racist comment!", like the phrase "Promise you won't get angry but ..." is a warning sign to say I am about to **** you off!

Didn't Roberto Carlos have a similar problem when he moved there? I wonder if Eto'o has a similar problem with his Russian club or if it is just Zenit.

 

[Tangled up in Blue]

Anecdotal I know but a couple of years ago on holiday in St. Pete's, we got chatting to a really charming Egyptian guy(married to a Russian),who'd been beaten up in the street there, purely because of the colour of his skin.