Racism: Why it cannot be the 23rd player on the pitch

When is the footballing world going to understand that racism is a cowards way of extinguishing a frutrated mood. For years now, black people have worked hard to gain equality in social circles around the world and breaking the social boundaries that existed amongst our ancestors.

And rightly so.

If you actually think about it, why on earth does the colour of a man's skin matter? What on earth possessed the world to even deliver such outrageous statements? For instance, in Barack Obama, the United States of America has elected it's first black president in history.The first in 223 years. Why has it taken so long?

Although the vast majority across the globe have now forgotten these aged, atrocious ways of inequality among races, it seems football is a sport that is still learning to walk in the metaphorical sense of juvenility.

My thoughts were, that with the campaign's "Let's kick Racism out of Football" and "Stand Up. Speak Up. joined with a bright, positive, social atmosphere, that this sort of execrable behaviour had been driven away, but it seems to have drifted back onto the horizon in recent weeks.
   The stories of John Terry and the freshly erupted volcano that is Suarez versus Evra, have only fuelled the idea that these overpaid, arrogant, cant-get-down-off-their-high-horses footballers, need a preverbial slap round the ear.

I have no particular favoured personnel in either of these cases, but know that the media only want to sensationalise these occurences with speedy assumptions over who allegedly said what and how they allegedly said it. I will always stand by my claim that the word 'allegedly' is a terrible word to use when writing or reading news stories. For me, the word 'allegedly' roughly translates as; "We are not sure what happened or what was said, but we need to jump on the bandwagon, or we risk feeling left out."

When reading about the Suarez/Evra scenario, it cropped up that Suarez responded to the claims that he did use a word to insult Evra, but the word in particular isn't deemed to be offensive in his homeland of Uruguay.

And?

Players have to realise that whenever they emigrate, move home or even simply change jobs, that there are new rules and new boundaries in place. It is illegal in some states of America and Australia to wed a gay couple. Would you ever find someone who broke that law plead their innocence by claiming it's ok at home? That just doesnt cut it for me I'm afraid.

Yes maybe John Terry has been stripped of the England captaincy and put on Trial. Yes maybe Luis Suarez was slammed by an eight match ban. But did you see Suarez unhappy or suffering? He still cheered from the stands when Liverpool won. He was still getting his £100,000 a week wages.




Remarkably, even when he returned, notably against Manchester United, he refused Evra's handshake in the games opening exchanges. And for what?

We seriously need to start imposing more serious punishments, harsher consequences on those who want to muddy the somewhat clear waters with their handheld verbal dictionary of obscenities.