ZURICH: FIFA president Sepp Blatter yesterday backtracked on his call to dock points or relegate football clubs whose fans are found guilty of racist abuse and violence.
“How far should we go? Where should we stop?” the boss of world football’s governing body said at a meeting of the company Early Warning System, which monitors matches on FIFA’s behalf to fight match-fixing.
“Can we bring an end to violence or racism by docking points or relegating a team? Or would such measures lead people to come to games to get the match abandoned,” he said.
“We should do all we can but there’s a danger that if we have matches replayed or if we punish clubs on the sporting front, it will open the door to hooligan groups who will come to deliberately cause trouble.
“There is so much emotion surrounding football.” Blatter’s comments go against his stance back in January, when the 77-year-old said that slapping financial penalties on clubs or ordering them to play matches behind closed doors did not go far enough.
Instead, he said, teams should be hit with a points deduction or even face relegation.
Blatter’s remarks at the time came after AC Milan’s Kevin-Prince Boateng and his teammates walked off a pitch during a friendly match with fourth-division Italian side Pro Patria in protest at a solid hail of abuse from his club’s rivals’ fans.
After initially disagreeing with Boateng’s decision to take the laws of the game into his own hands, Blatter swung behind the player and said tough action was needed and football should show the way because of its worldwide following.
Boateng was recently named a member of FIFA’s anti-racism taskforce.
Yesterday, Blatter also said that a proposal for uniform sanctions across all of FIFA’s 209 member associations would be put to a vote at its congress in May.
“The same standard must apply for each and every league and national association,” he said.
Match fixing
investigation
The South African government will set up an investigation into allegations of match fixing in the run-up to the 2010 World Cup after meeting with FIFA and its own national football association yesterday.
South Africa’s sports ministry and FIFA said there was a “concrete conclusion” from the three parties on a long-awaited commission to look into possible corruption in games involving the South African national team just weeks ahead of the world’s top tournament.
South Africa’s widely-praised hosting of the World Cup three years ago has now been tainted after a FIFA report last year found “compelling” evidence that some of the national team’s warm-up games for the tournament were fixed.
The South African Football Association conceded there was evidence it had been infiltrated by match-fixers ahead of the games and some of its own officials are under suspicion.
South Africa sports minister Fikile Mbalula, FIFA Secretary General Jerome Valcke and South African Football Association president Kirsten Nematandani held talks at FIFA in Zurich yesterday and agreed on a way forward after months of little or no progress on an investigation into the allegations — which bring match-fixing close to FIFA’s showpiece event.
The independent commission would be set up by the government, with its mandate limited only to investigating any irregularities in South Africa’s friendly games ahead of the World Cup.
FIFA also proposed that its own ethics committee be part of the commission, but this was subject to approval by the South African government, the parties said in a joint statement.
