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FIFA has begun investigations on racial abuse aimed at England players on Thursday during their World Cup qualifier match against Hungary. England won the game quite convincingly, scoring four goals and conceding none.
Jude Bellingham and Raheem Sterling, two of England’s finest players, were targeted during the match and England has said that this kind of abuse was utterly unacceptable. England’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson has urged FIFA to take strict action against those responsible to ensure that this kind of disgraceful behavior is never repeated both on and off the pitch.
FIFA has said that they will take the right actions once they have spoken to the match officials and delegates who were present at the time. UEFA previously had ordered Hungary to pay three of their home games behind closed doors after the fans had observed discriminatory behavior.
However, FIFA didn’t follow the same protocol and had instead allowed fans to return to the stadium. UEFA had placed the ban during Euro 2020 to protect the players and the game from racial abuse, which can quickly leave a bad taste for football fans worldwide regardless of the outcome of the match.
Even though FIFA has said that it has a zero-tolerance for racial abuse, anti-discrimination bodies like Fare and Show Racism the Red Card have spoken against FIFA and UEFA regarding how they have handled the existing ban on Hungary.
Tony Burnett the CEO of Kick it Out, said that they were perplexed by this situation as FIFA did not act according to prevent this from happening and that it put the entire football system into question.
Others have said that education programs need to be set up to educate people on racial abuse and how to prevent it. It is up to global football governing bodies to show that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated in the game, not now and not ever.
The incident occurred when the England players took a knee just before the match, and the fans inside the arena started booing. You could very clearly hear racist chants against Bellingham and Sterling.
This didn’t stop here; Sterling was pelted with bottles and paper cups when scoring the first goal for England during the second half. Later in the evening, a Fan threw a flare on the pitch after Harry Maguire bagged the third goal for his team.
The Hungarian Football Federation has said they need to identify and punish the people who disrupted the match. People, however, have said that the Hungarian Football Federation failed to mention racial discrimination in any of their statements.
It is sad to see that even a game so pure as football is being marred by such chants and actions. England manager Gareth Southgate also expressed his sadness about the whole incident and said they would use proper channels to handle the situation in the best way possible.
