During the recent spate of racism in football Moise Kean was subject to racist abuse from Cagliari fans he responded on the pitch by scoring a goal in front of the very fans that heckled him, the perfect way to shut them up perhaps. Afterwards players have shown lots of support for Kean and what he has had to endure and Serie A league officials stated that there would be investigations into the alleged abuse suffered by Kean.
It came to light yesterday, the 14th of May 2019 that the investigation yielded no evidence of racist abuse and as such the Cagliari football club would not be penalized.
So what does the Serie A football association think happened? Do they think the player is lying? Other players have come out and said they heard the abuse as well and for Kean to come out so publically would suggest he is not lying. My best guess would be that they cannot find out exactly who it was so now they going to do nothing and for me this is unacceptable for the Italian football league. A league watched by people all over the world. A league that young children watch week in and week out. What type of message is this sending to those children of colour? Come play in or watch a league where we don’t want racism but if there are racist incidents its ok? I don’t care if it was one fan, my view remains the same, all fans should be banned from the stadium for 5 games and after that there should be a probation period where if there are reported incidents and they are confirmed, then the clubs ban gets doubled this time and tripled the next time and so on and so forth.
Enough is enough of these people who are racists. I can’t and won’t accept this as a way forward. They need to be dealt with so harshly that they stay away from football and keep their racist backwards thinking to themselves.
One aspect I am quite happy with is the fact that it’s the young players leading the way in the fight against racist abuse in the sport they love. In any other work environment it would not be tolerated so why should footballers have to? Just because they get paid a lot of money and have celebrity status does not mean they must not be treated as equals in our society?
The Serie A have set a dangerous precedent by not doing anything about what is going on right under their noses. I believe it boils down to money and greed! Investigations cost money, banning team’s cost money and law-suits cost money, but is that’s what’s most important in that situation? I should seriously hope not, because if money is all football is about now then nothing will ever be done really. They will launch investigations that yield no results and make campaigns that have no aim just for the optics that they are “ doing something” about the situation.
In the end it’s the players themselves that must keep making it known to the public. They must continue to use the social media platforms as a way of reaching people. In future they could also consider legal action if nothing is done about something that is taking away from the beautiful game we all know and love.
What is strange to me is that we are supposed to be in an era where racism is being stamped out and yet it seems to be becoming more and more prevalent. Especially in sport it seems that we expect our sports heroes to suffer in silence while they entertain us with flashes of brilliance and skill. It’s also up to us as fans to stand up for our players who are being subjected to this racism. They need all the help and support they can get because the people at the top will listen if we hit them where it hurts, in their pockets!
It’s also up to us to stop these racist fans in stadiums and if we see it happening to record it or report it to officials or better yet post it to social media to show people how narrow minded and frankly ignorant these racist fan are and to weed these people out of football and sport for good. I refuse to believe that people like me are in the minority in this situation and I believe that if we really wanted to, we could take a stand and get this right, not only for us as fans, but for future generations of fans as well.
We can show them the way forward and they can learn and understand that racism in sport can and must be eradicated!
