The president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, will propose historic sanctions for teams whose fans are involved in racist incidents. This comes in response to the appalling events against Mike Maignan and Kasey Palmer.
“The events that took place in Udine and Sheffield on Saturday are totally abhorrent and completely unacceptable. There is no place for racism or any form of discrimination, both in football and in society. The players affected by Saturday’s events have my undivided support.”
Fans of Udinese directed racist chants against the goalkeeper of AC Milan and, as a consequence, Maignan decided to leave the field along with his teammates. The match was temporarily suspended at Friuli Stadium.
Meanwhile, the midfielder of Coventry, Kasey Palmer, accused Sheffield Wednesday fans of doing the same thing to him during Saturday’s match in the English Football League Championship which his team won 2-1.
Mike Maignan left the field after racist chants from Udinese fans (Getty Images)
Gianni Infantino proposes ‘forfeit’ to fight against racism
Gianni Infantino admitted that all the relevant stakeholders need to take action in order to stop racism worldwide. That’s why, a historic change might be implemented to prevent these incidents.
“As well as the three-step process (match stopped, match re-stopped, match abandoned), we have to implement an automatic forfeit for the team whose fans have committed racism and caused the match to be abandoned as well as worldwide stadium bans and criminal charges for racists.”
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Despite FIFA’s fight against racism being applauded on social media, many fans and teams have numerous doubts about how this strategy could be implemented. The argument is that, due to a few fans over whom there is no control, clubs could be adversely affected.
For example, a scenario raised in the debate on the issue is what would happen if, in a match, a fan goes to the stands of the opposing team and from there makes racist chants to prompt a punishment against that club.
