When Kevin-Prince Boeteng walked off the field along with his team recently, everybody gave his own opinion about whether his course of action during those sensitive moments was correct or not, but everyone was agreed on one point that he should have such powers citing the uncontrollable racial chanting from the crowd. Before leaving off, he repeatedly appealed to the crowd to stop but when nothing seemed to be working, he had to take back his team in the dressing room. After a long debate over that incident, now, European governing body is standing by him and says referees have already been given powers to stop any game when something uncontrolled is there. However, such powers are widely ignored by everyone hence now time has come when referees should aggressively use their commands to control the situation even if they need to abandon a game for that reason. UEFA recalls that it encapsulated such guidelines to nab down racism & discrimination in discussion with European Clubs Association and world players’ union back in 2009. Now, a new resolution has been tabled by Professional Football Strategy Council which is a collective team of representatives from UEFA, national leagues, European clubs, and players.
Another important point that has been put together in the resolution is match fixing. Last week, a professional betting watchdog revealed that almost every European football club is directly or indirectly linked with match fixing and resolution has put a zero tolerance policy to tackle fixing problem. It reads as, “All four organisations agree that sports bodies do not have the means or the legal jurisdictions to tackle by themselves a problem, which often involves criminal organisations.
“Sports fraud should therefore be recognised as a specific criminal offence in national legislations throughout Europe, as this would help to ensure a consistent, effective and coordinated means to deter match-fixing. At the same time, European states should consider dedicated prosecution services with a primary responsibility of dealing with sports fraud cases.
“Efforts towards the adoption of an international convention on match-fixing under the auspices of the Council of Europe should be encouraged – with full involvement of football stakeholders.”
It also added that despite corrective steps taken by many clubs, racism and match fixing is still uncontrollable; hence it is required to take strict action against any culprit without any mercy whatsoever. It looks promising, but would it be effective, let’s wait and watch.