Anti-discrimination chief Webb says World Cup ‘disconnect’ needs closing

Jeff Webb11

By Andrew Warshaw
July 4 – The man leading FIFA’s fight to cut out discrimination has said that insufficient effort has been made by the authorities at the World Cup and that there has been a “disconnect” between the stated aim and what has actually occurred.

Exposing a lack of action, CONCACAF president Jeffrey Webb said far more should have been done to tackle homophobic chanting and other forms of racism.

Webb, head of FIFA’s anti-discrimination Task Force, said that the plan was to deploy trained staff specifically to target racism and report back but that this hadn’t happened.

“There is absolutely no reason why at this World Cup we don’t have anti-discrimination officers here doing proper investigations, proper reporting,” Webb told reporters.

The Task Force proposed in March that anti-discrimination officers should be used in Brazil. “Really, this is one of the key parts of fighting against racism and discrimination,” Webb told a briefing.

Fans of several countries, including Mexico, Russia, Croatia and even the host nation, have been cited during the tournament for discriminatory behaviour but no action has been taken by FIFA’s disciplinary committee.

Committee chief Claudio Sulser told the same briefing this was because the abuse, mainly chanting, was not aimed at any identifiable individual players.

But Webb countered: “It is obvious there is a disconnect between what we in the Task Force deem as racism and discrimination and what the Disciplinary Committee deems as racism and discrimination.

“There is a disconnect between accountability and responsibility. Whether [insulting chanting] is targeting one individual or the entire team it’s discrimination.”

Webb said the Mexico case, in which fans used verbal insults, in particular at opposing goalkeepers, was the kind of behaviour that would have been looked into by anti-discrimination officers of the kind already used by UEFA in their competitions using bodies such as FARE. “This is exactly what we are trying to work on and it should have been in place for this World Cup,” he said.

Webb, who is from the Cayman Islands, said FIFA would need to strengthen its fight against discrimination before the next World Cup in Russia in 2018.

“It is much more of a problem in Russia. Russia itself needs a special task force, just for Russia and from an educational standpoint internally,” he said.

Federico Addiechi, FIFA’s director of corporate social responsibility, said it was unrealistic to expect trained officers to have been put in place so fast. “Training of anti-discrimination officers for each of the 32 participating associations is not something you can do in the proper way in such a short period of time,” Addiechi said.

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