Last week, everyone saw how Real Madrid walked out of the game citing continuous racial chanting coming from the ground. This incident was an eye opener for soccer think tanks, especially for government who took this incident more seriously than English FA. Racism has always been a part of soccer games but on English soil, it was probably the first incident where something like this happened in a European country. There were many different reactions from soccer fraternity after the incident, and prominently, a war of words has been started between Madrid owner and FIFA president coz both of them seemed to have a different opinion about Madrid’s walkout. Whereas Madrid boss has had a view that his team was right to walk off, FIFA president seemed to be in favor of finding more concrete solutions rather just leaving the ground.
Now, Italian lawmakers have enacted a new rule whereby no team or player can decide to leave the ground on their own if there is a racial abusing on the ground, especially by the crowd. Perhaps, it would only be decided by the ground’s security officials only if they can’t ensure smooth running of the game. Actually, ground security officers were also heavily criticized after Madrid walk out last week despite they were nowhere involved in the incident. Moreover, Madrid did not inform them either about their decision to leave the game which eventually caused the abandonment of the game.
Italy sports events watchdog ONMS has enacted this rule and lay down the whole process to handle these racial situations. It issued a statement which mentioned that in these cases, ground referees would inform the fourth referee who in turn inform about the situation to ground security, and then security officials will decide whether they can provide adequate security to players or not. If not, they can abandon the match. ONMS issued its statement after a meeting with Italian FA that reads as, “The director of the public order service has the sole responsibility for suspending the match.
“The director, in the presence of expressions of racism or intolerance, will decide in all cases on the non-continuation of the match or its suspension on a temporary basis to allow warnings to be issued to supporters over the public address system.”
The latest enactment will probably end the war between FIFA president and Real boss which looked to be heating up recently.