Liverpool sent their players out in Suarez t-shirts at the height of an impossibly ill judged PR campaign to protect their player. Chelsea have handed John Terry a ‘record fine’, but still retain his service as captain and talisman of the club. They have even gone so far as to issue an apology to the Ferdinand family through Bruce Buck, who was quoted as saying,
“We understand what they have gone through and Chelsea Football Club would like to apologise to them because it has been a very difficult time for them.
“They didn’t do anything wrong, they shouldn’t be suffering and we’re sorry.”
The club in this instance have protected their player, who has apologised for the language himself but not directly towards the Ferdinand family in the same way the club has.
The fans themselves might see the apology but also see their clubs endorsing their heroes straight after being convicted by the FA of racist behaviour. Terry has been fined but still leads the club on the field. So if you can’t trust the clubs, can the FA or PFA intervene?
Gordon Taylor at the PFA has swiftly announced a 6 point plan designed to speed up the process of processing the racism enquiries, and potentially hand out stiffer punishments. Most interesting was the possibility of making racial abuse gross misconduct and therefore potentially a sackable offence. Laughable of course to everyone else currently in any working environment who already knows that racial abuse would see them sacked, but nonetheless a step in the right direction.
If it can be written into players contracts then you place the clubs in a much more pressured situation to sack their players, and that is not a situation without precedence. Remember that Chelsea were content to sack Adrian Mutu back in 2004 for drugs offences, his own gross misconduct. Of course, another key part to that was a lengthy ban in the offing, and that is where the FA come in. We’ll be awaiting with baited breath over the coming weeks to see if there is any possibility of further, stronger action from them in the future. After all, if you can be up in arms expecting the Serbian FA to get their house in order, the least you can do is make sure that you’re doing the same.
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