Do you like playing the game ‘would you rather’?
There was an ill-tempered football match between Glasgow Rangers and Slavia Prague. Ondrej Kudela was given a ten match ban for racist behaviour after he whispered to Glen Kamara “you’re a monkey, you’re a fucking monkey, and you know you are”. Kamara was given a three match ban for assaulting Kudela in the tunnel after the game. In the same match Kemar Roofe was sent off and given a four match ban after he kicked the Prague goalkeeper in the face, fracturing his skull and leaving him needing 10 stitches.
Would you rather be subject to a racist insult, be assaulted in the tunnel after a game, or have your skull fractured?
With the length of bans — 10, 3, and 4 respectively — UEFA has shown its preference.
Obviously the offences belong to different categories. One could be accidental or negligent, two were during the course of the game, one followed it, some or all occurred when passions were raised. But the relative bans and extent of the carnival of outrage are interesting and, on the face of it, they don’t make much sense.
More recently, another footballer was suspended for 7 games for calling an opponent “a diving foreign ****”, since the language included a reference, whether expressed or implied, to nationality and ethnicity. Is this 70% as bad as Kudela’s insult?
I am no expert in jurisprudence, thank God. But it seems to me the justification for sanctioning words more than kicks and boots would be that injuring an opponent during the game is a normal byproduct of the game; and even if it is bad, it is commonly understood to be bad. The standard ban for violent conduct (ie “excessive force or brutality”) is 3 games.
On the other hand attitudes to racism are changing, and racism is still not unacceptable to a lot of people. Therefore comparatively stiffer sanctions are required to both show that the governing body is serious about the topic, and to force a change of behaviour.
The problem, as I see it, is once you’ve achieved a change in norms, how do you bring it back to a propotional punishment without being accused of going soft on racism? That is not something I expect an organisation like UEFA will manage well.
