Football: Blatter backtracks on racism sanctions
FIFA president Sepp Blatter on Friday eased his hardline stance on combating racial abuse.
ZURICH (AFP) - FIFA president Sepp Blatter on Friday backtracked on his call to dock points or relegate football clubs whose fans are found guilty of racist abuse and violence, claiming it would be difficult to enforce such measures.
Blatter had said last January that slapping financial penalties on clubs or ordering them to play matches behind closed doors did not go far enough, indicating teams should instead be hit with a points deduction or even face relegation.
But in comments Friday he appeared to recognise the practical difficulty of enforcing such hard-hitting measures.
"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."
FIFA said in a statement following Blatter s comments that his view is prevention must go hand in hand with punishment, even if some fans might seek to abuse the system, no matter how challenging the implementation of tough sanctions might prove.
Stressing Blatter s "zero tolerance towards any form of racism" and commitment to pursue its eradication from the game, FIFA insisted that "at no stage did the FIFA President say any words that could be interpreted as him backing away from his firm position to sanction actions of any form of racism."
Blatter s remarks at the time came after AC Milan s Kevin-Prince Boateng and his team-mates walked off a pitch during a friendly match with fourth-division Italian side Pro Patria in protest at a solid hail of abuse from rival 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.
"As mentioned previously the FIFA President underlined that fines achieve little, but points deductions and exclusion from competitions would be effective measures," added FIFA in its statement..
Boateng was recently named a member of FIFA s anti-racism taskforce.
On Friday, 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.
