By Paul Nicholson
March 16 – The problem of racism in Russian football is getting the full attention of FIFA with CONCACAF president Jeffrey Webb (pictured), who heads FIFA’s anti-racism and discrimination task force, saying that the problem needs to be tackled from the “dressing room out”.
Earlier this month a report by two anti-discrimination organisations said there had been more than 200 cases of discriminatory behavior linked to Russian soccer over the past two seasons. FIFA president Sepp Blatter has already warned that Russia could face sanctions if its record on racism does not improve.
The racism report by the Moscow-based SOVA Center and the Fare network collated dozens of cases where fans carried out campaigns and sold far-right merchandise to collect money for imprisoned neo-Nazis.
It provides a detailed breakdown of discriminatory incidents around matches, pinpointing 72 displays of neo-Nazi symbols, 22 acts against people from the Caucasus region, which includes Dagestan and Chechnya, and five occasions of abuse against black people.
Fare said that the report, which covers 2012-14, does not include an apparent rise in the targeting of black players being documented this season.
High profile incidents that have made the press worldwide include monkey chants directed at Zenit St Petersburg’s Brazil forward Hulk and Dynamo Moscow’s Congo defender Christopher Samba during Russian Premier League games. Manchester City’s Yaya Toure also faced monkey chants in a Champions League game against CSKA Moscow.
General secretary of the Russian Football Union, Anatoly Vorobyov, admitted that attempts to eliminate racist behavior within football had not gone smoothly, saying that tougher sanctions might be needed.
“We have enough disciplinary measures, which are laid out in our regulations. On the other hand, perhaps they need to be used more strictly. It is necessary that the professional football league and the clubs work more closely together,” said Vorobyov
Webb’s addition to the demands for change within Russia marks a raising of the level of concern that the world governing body has over the issue.
Speaking to Reuters, Webb said: “Russia’s a big challenge. We’ve met with minister of sport Vitaly Mutko, who is a member of the FIFA executive committee, and he has publicly said, ‘Look, it’s a challenge, it’s obviously a problem’. They are going to start addressing it. We are going to work with them hand-in-hand.”
Webb said that education has to be at the heart of the process. “Education, it has to be education. You are not born that way, it is something you are taught, someone teaches you to hate or to develop a certain way, we have to go into the communities,” he said.
FIFA may have been slow to get moving on the issue but it is now getting into its stride. “From a FIFA perspective, we have got staff now dedicated to this. We have a social responsibility department with officers now dedicated for racism, we identify high-risk games and we are now going through the process of FIFA selecting monitors,” said Webb.
“Right now they are assigning UEFA and CONCACAF officers to high-risk games but by summer you will have FIFA up to scratch with it. That is a huge process because of the reporting side.”
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