Accusations made by Patrice Evra, which have now been conjured into fact by the FA's decision to agree with his word rather than that of Luis Suarez which has made by extension, Luis Suarez and anyone who doubts the word of Patrice Evra also racist.
I'm perhaps going a little over the top here.. and I don't particularly want to get into the details of the Suarez case, but I do find it quite odd that a case that seems to hang on the nuances of the Spanish language - the FA have sided with the guy who speaks French and never actually played in Spain, never mind South America - and also has a history of lying about this kind of thing.
Liverpool's reaction to the Suarez case has been criticized by the media as they decided to support their player.. as by extension if Suarez is found to be racist, then Liverpool FC and now it seems all their fans are all racist. This is clearly gibberish, but it seems to sell newspapers and as we have previously discovered they are not particularly concerned with facts either - even today Kelvin McKenzie was telling the Leveson inquiry that he would quite happily would publish most things without troubling himself too much over whether they were actually true or not... with subsequent sales of the S*n in Liverpool a reasonable argument for maybe not printing any old bullshit that springs to mind.
I'm ranting a little, you may have noticed.
Things took an unexpected turn on Friday in the FA Cup against Oldham with the racial abuse suffered by Tom Adeyemi. I was frankly shocked that this happened and also disgusted. Liverpool have apologised to Adeyemi. The person in question has been arrested and will most likely be banned for life from every ground in the country - and he deserves everything he gets.
Now Liverpool's response to the Suarez case has been blamed for this.. that we are not taking a tough enough stance against racism. Perhaps this is not a coincidence that the first arrest of a Liverpool fan for the past 2 years for racial abuse (I couldn't find the stats for any earlier) comes after this issue has been highlighted. Incidentally Bolton and Blackburn are top of this particular league, I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.
Maybe it isn't.. you can't be held responsible for every idiot who walks through a turnstile, but you can react accordingly and it looks as though the club will take every step possible in dealing with this, frankly as harshly as possible.
And lets get this straight.. not only is this idiot stupid enough to :
a. hold these opinions in the first place.
b. broadcast them, with a thousand or so witnesses in earshot and surrounded by cameras.
c. at a club that would throw the book at him anyway, but now have even more reason to with all the recent events.
Hopefully this will all be resolved quickly, and it does seem to be progressing at pace.
So with this ratcheting up the media attention directed at Liverpool for the wrong reasons we now have the delightful prospect of the guy who started all this in the first place returning to Anfield in the FA Cup.
I wonder whether Patrice Evra will even play in the 4th round game, and if he does Liverpool fans will again be accused of being racist, because let's get this straight, this is not a man that we are happy with at the moment. It will be similar to the FA Cup game in 2006 when Gary Neville (what is it with Man Utd full backs) was the target of our anger and that was only for running the length of the pitch to celebrate in front of the away fans at Old Trafford a month or so before.. The general perception is the Evra lied to get Suarez banned, coincidentally this is also my perception. The reception Evra receives will be... heated, shall we say.
It will also be heated should he play in France's friendly with Uruguay in August as Suarez's Uruguay team mate Alvaro Pereira suggesting that Evra will require body armour for that possibly not so friendly encounter... again I suspect he may develop a bout of the sniffles for that game and probably the one at Anfield as well.
Now Liverpool's response to the Suarez case has been blamed for this.. that we are not taking a tough enough stance against racism. Perhaps this is not a coincidence that the first arrest of a Liverpool fan for the past 2 years for racial abuse (I couldn't find the stats for any earlier) comes after this issue has been highlighted. Incidentally Bolton and Blackburn are top of this particular league, I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.
Maybe it isn't.. you can't be held responsible for every idiot who walks through a turnstile, but you can react accordingly and it looks as though the club will take every step possible in dealing with this, frankly as harshly as possible.
And lets get this straight.. not only is this idiot stupid enough to :
a. hold these opinions in the first place.
b. broadcast them, with a thousand or so witnesses in earshot and surrounded by cameras.
c. at a club that would throw the book at him anyway, but now have even more reason to with all the recent events.
Hopefully this will all be resolved quickly, and it does seem to be progressing at pace.
So with this ratcheting up the media attention directed at Liverpool for the wrong reasons we now have the delightful prospect of the guy who started all this in the first place returning to Anfield in the FA Cup.
I wonder whether Patrice Evra will even play in the 4th round game, and if he does Liverpool fans will again be accused of being racist, because let's get this straight, this is not a man that we are happy with at the moment. It will be similar to the FA Cup game in 2006 when Gary Neville (what is it with Man Utd full backs) was the target of our anger and that was only for running the length of the pitch to celebrate in front of the away fans at Old Trafford a month or so before.. The general perception is the Evra lied to get Suarez banned, coincidentally this is also my perception. The reception Evra receives will be... heated, shall we say.
It will also be heated should he play in France's friendly with Uruguay in August as Suarez's Uruguay team mate Alvaro Pereira suggesting that Evra will require body armour for that possibly not so friendly encounter... again I suspect he may develop a bout of the sniffles for that game and probably the one at Anfield as well.
"FA's decision to agree with his word rather than that of Luis Suarez" - Suarez testimony backed up Evra's claim that he used a negro-derived epithet towards Evra on multiple occasions.
ReplyDelete"a case that seems to hang on the nuances of the Spanish language - the FA have sided with the guy who speaks French" - actually, they took the testimony of several language experts.
Clearly Liverpool aren't a racist club, but they also clearly failed to grasp the gravity which the FA were attaching to the situation. I sort of agree with clubs blindly backing their players prior anything being proven, but Liverpool, and in particular Kenny Dalgleish's combative, whingeing and offish tone when commenting suggests a club which did not take racist accusations entirely seriously. Their position seemed to be that the FA were being ridiculous in even pursuing the allegation - exactly the kind of attitude that has allowed low level racism to continue within the game.
Even if you do not agree with this opinion, I expected Liverpool as a club of integrity and class, once the decision came down, to take it like a man. Instead they issued another narky statement and waited until literally the last minute before deciding not to appeal - something they clearly only did once someone within the club got real and realised the FA weren't going to overturn a decision they had taken so long to arrive at.
For once, I think this is a situation where the FA did the right thing, in the right way. You can argue about the nuances and length of sentence etc... but if the game ever wants to properly tackle racism (and not by just shaking hands) then they have to take a stand at some point, and I applaud Evra for sticking with it so doggedly, when he must have felt pressure to drop it. Unfortunately for Liverpool fans, they were the club in the wrong place at the wrong time, and against the wrong Man Utd full back.
Not disputing the word he used, just the actual meaning of it. Apparently it's OK to use, but not if you're having an argument - which Evra seems to be having usually anyway.
ReplyDeleteLiverpool backed Suarez and I was surprised when they didn't actually appeal, but in a case when it's just one word against another, you're going to struggle to bring anything else to the table and I doubt they'd have listened anyway.
The main problem now is that he's been branded a racist, which will stick regardless. So come the summer he'll probably do one to Spain where he can talk Spanish all he likes and not get crucified for it.