Campaign Sake Cup
Campaign Sake Cup
Should FIFA put more effort towards tackling cheating than tackling racism?
Watching yesterday’s World Cup matches, they had the big campaigns beforehand of “Let’s kick racism out of football”. Now, i’m all for tackling racism but is it really the biggest problem football has at the moment? You’ve got referee’s and Italian clubs fixing matches, player’s diving and faking injuries all the time and players intimidating referees into making certain decisions. Should FIFA put a campaign against cheating ahead of racism, for the sake of the game?
There are many things wrong in football as you have highlighted – but these should not be tackled at the expense of kicking racism out of football – there is no place in this world for any type of racism. To get rid of the cheats would be fairly easy, and could be done without disrupting a game by stopping to check video replays. What FIFA should do is set up an independent committee, along the lines of the one they have for disputed goals (the one where they determine who scored a goal or if it was an own-goal). The referee would run the match as usual, making his decisions as he goes along, then if anything is disputed the committee could look at the evidence and hand out hefty bans for those caught diving, elbowing, etc. I think it would work, as players would think twice about taking a dive if they knew they might receive a 3 match ban. And the game would flow as normal, with the decisions the referee makes on the day standing. Clearly something has to be done.