Everyone will agree on the fact that racism needs to be cut out from soccer, and there are countless measures being taken out in various parts of the world to eradicate this anti human aspect of the game. Another dark area of soccer, or perhaps any other sport, is sexuality of players, coz LGTB players have ever been a part of every traditional sport including soccer. Now, a controversy seems to be arising from the den of two-time defending Russian champion Zenit St. Petersburg’s fans club Landscrona, who released their manifesto last Monday asking for a complete ban on nonwhite players along with gay ones. It is one of shocking revelation by one of the biggest soccer fans club in the world, however, for the time being, club has departed itself from this manifesto describing it as anti-humanity, but on the other side, fans are in no mood to change their mind or demands. For them, gay players are unworthy of their great city, while ‘dark-skinned players are all but forced down Zenit’s throat now, which only brings out a negative reaction.’ Their released manifesto demands only white heterosexual players in the team.
Dietmar Beiersdorfer, Zenit’s director of sports, has wiped out all these ‘rubbish’ and said, “we make our player selections without any limitation regarding origin, religion or skin colour. Our club’s goal is to win the Russian championship and to be highly competitive in international competitions as well. We have absolutely no policy in Zenit of limiting our player selection in any superficial way.” Actually, whatever is happening now is because of the trendy culture in the region where they treat dark skin as a sign of inferiority. That is why Zenit has been the only Russian team without even a single dark skinned player until this season. This season, they signed Brazilian Hulk and Belgian Axel Witsel at a combined total of €80m. Another dark skin player Yann M’Vila declined to move to Zenit last August after receiving death threats from various fans clubs in there.
Zenit head coach Luciano Spalletti has marked it as a preached message of stupidity, he said, “Tolerance for me is most of all the ability to understand and accept differences. Furthermore, being tolerant means that you fight against any kind of stupidity. He also promised that the club would support local initiatives to combat xenophobia and racism.” Let’s see if things ever change at Zenit.