A slew of recent racist incidents prompted the governing body’s president to call for action at his federation’s annual awards ceremony
FIFA president Gianni Infantino has urged football to banish racism once and for all in a speech at his federation’s annual The Best awards.
Infantino addressed the crowd at the ceremony in Milan on Monday, before presenting Lionel Messi with The Best FIFA Men’s Player prize .
But first he spoke of the disgraceful scenes during Atalanta‘s game against Fiorentina in Serie A on Sunday.
The 2-2 draw at the Ennio Tardini was stopped for three minutes after Fiorentina defender Dalbert, on loan from Inter, reported racist abuse from the crowd to the referee.
“I want to say this here in Italy, in my country. Yesterday, again, we have witnessed in the Italian championship an example of racism,” Infantino said.
“This is not acceptable any more. We have to say this. We have to say no to racism, in whatever form.
“No to racism in football, no to racism in society. But we don’t have just to say it. We have to fight against it.
“We have to kick racism out once and for all in Italy and in the rest of the world. Out of football and out of society.”
Striker Romelu Lukaku was subjected to monkey chants during Inter‘s 2-1 win at Cagliari earlier this month, while Hellas Verona denied Franck Kessie was racially abused by their fans during a 1-0 defeat to AC Milan.
Kessie slammed Verona’s claims that the referee was the target of whistles as ‘unacceptable and disgraceful’.
The racism incidents haven’t only been confined to Serie A, with several Premier League players, including Paul Pogba, Marcus Rashford and Tammy Abraham subjected to vile comments on social media.
English top-flight’s governing body is currently in talks with Twitter over what can be done to stop the hateful speech to be displayed on the social media platform.
“The Premier League, EFL and FA met Twitter today [Friday] with respect to the ongoing concerns surrounding discriminatory and hateful conduct taking place on the platform,” the governing body said in a statement.
“The meeting was productive and positive, and gave both the football authorities and Twitter an opportunity to examine some of the specific issues around this unacceptable behaviour both online and offline.
“All parties agreed to take these constructive discussions forward.”
In September 2016, seven months after Infantino took office, FIFA disbanded its anti-racism task force, declaring it had “completely fulfilled its temporary mission’.
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