Authorities water down rules on racism
05/09/2006 - 17:39:02Football’s authorities have had to water down new rules to impose automatic points deductions on clubs and countries whose supporters are guilty of racist behaviour.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter announced in March that an automatic three-point deduction would be imposed for a first offence of racism.
However, FIFA and UEFA legal officials have since studied the new rules and decided they would be open to a challenge in court.
UEFA’s new regulations for the Euro 2008 qualifiers and European club matches do allow disciplinary bodies to impose points deductions and exclusions, but the only stipulated minimum punishment is a €20,700 fine.
That is only slightly more than the €16,300 the Macedonian FA was fined in 2003 after racist abuse aimed at England players Emile Heskey, Ashley Cole and Sol Campbell.
UEFA communications director William Gaillard insisted any abuse at tomorrow’s international in Skopje would not be tolerated, but admitted the automatic points deduction did not apply.
Gaillard said: “It has had to be watered down because it was on shaky legal ground. The legal committees of UEFA and FIFA felt an automatic points deduction would not have stood up in a civil court.
“Having said that, the rules, UEFA’s Article 11, do give the disciplinary body more power to fight racist behaviour.”
Gaillard said it was now up to the discretion of the disciplinary panel throw any country or club side out of their competitions, dock points, or order future matches to be played behind closed doors if players are subjected to racism.
He added: “I think we are better equipped today to deal with such behaviour, because we have reinforced our disciplinary measures through new articles, which give UEFA more power to fight racist behaviour.
“It goes quite far in terms of giving us the kind of ammunition we may need in some circumstances.”
FIFA sent out a circular to national associations in July amending the original rules and giving disciplinary bodies the option to reduce sanctions.
The amendment said: “Sanctions imposed on the basis of this article may be reduced or even disregarded if the player, team, club or association concerned can prove that it was not or was only minimally responsible for the offences in question or if other significant mitigating circumstances exist, particularly if the offences were provoked intentionally to cause a player, team, club or association to be sanctioned in accordance with this article.”
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