Considered by many to be our national sport, the beautiful game has recently been struggling with racism. The England under-21s were racially abused in Serbia and top footballers have been shunning the FA’s Kick It Out campaign.
Top flight players were expected to wear the black “one community” Kick It Out t-shirts to coincide with the FA anti-racism week which started on the 18th October. The problem is high profile stars such as England defender Rio Ferdinand and Reading striker Jason Roberts have rejected wearing the t-shirts because they believe the campaign isn’t doing enough.
Kick It Out began in 1993 and has appeared to be a fairly passive campaign since, efforts such as “show racism the red” have come and gone, and the scheme, once named Kick Racism Out, seems to exist as opposed to actually doing anything.
Manchester United gaffer Sir Alex Ferguson was quick to slam Ferdinand’s decision not to wear the shirt and said that it did not favours for the team harmony. However PFA chairman Clarke Carlisle, who recently explored racism in football for a BBC documentary “Is football racist?” In which Carlisle explores the adversaries his own father faced in the beautiful game, and met up with kids to find out what it’s like today.
On top of this we’ve had the controversial scenes in Serbia, England Under-21 defender Danny Rose, was sent off after the final whistle for reacting badly after fans were apparently throwing coins and bottles at the England players.
Racism has already been a hot topic in football the past season with Luis Suarez being banned for 8 matches for racially abusing Patrice Evra and John Terry’s high profile court case involving Anton Ferdinand.
