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New Anti-Racism Rules for the 2006 World Cup
FIFA has announced that its new anti-racism regulations, which took effect April 4 and are set to govern all domestic matches starting next season, will be enforced at the 2006 World Cup. The penalties already determined for the domestic leagues include a deduction of three points for the first offense, six for the second and relegation to a lower league division for the third. 'Any act or expression of a discriminatory and/or contemptuous nature' can also result in fines for fans or officials.
There have been calls for both intensifications and exceptions. Israel has said it will request a few week delay to allow for fan education, while others are calling for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be forbidden from attending the Cup (in Germany) as punishment for denying the Holocaust.
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re New Anti-Racism Rules for the 2006 World Cup by Anonymous :: NR0 :: Show
This can be looked at the any number of ways with modern sport, and no matter what your opinion on FIFA is, all of them positive.
Perhaps the best matrix I feel equipped to examine this issue is through my own experience of being a lifetime watcher of anything involving a ball, homoerotic overtones and the potential for crippling injury. Soccer's (sorry, as an Australian raised on rugby league I can't call it anything else) great tradition has always been the fierce parochialism of its supporters - whether they are watching club or country.
What devotees of the game must realise is that the game, for better or worse, now transcends this culture. Like all sport, soccer is a now a product. The industries that drive the game financially, notably subscription television and gambling (despite Blatter's comments in the article), expect amongst other things that the product is family-friendly and conforms to certain universal value.
This, coupled with the popularity of the game in Africa and the downright frightening numbers of people taking up the game Asia, meant that racial discrimination was inevitably going to be targeted by the game's governing body. On field behaviour has long been in the sight of administrators but boorish, racist fans seem to be an increasingly an odious sight - this article from Goal shows succinctly why FIFA has acted in the manner it has. Even in Australia, an underbelly of racial tension still exists as these riots at a local club game can testify .
What Blatter's proclamation says loud and clear (to paraphrase that great gangsta poet Ice Cube) is that fans better check themselves before they wreck the chances of the teams they support. Despite what these people may think personally - and nothing will probably ever change that - most people are aware that this behaviour is not acceptable in broader society, such as at work or even in the pub. About time some real deterrent was given to show that it's not acceptable at a sporting match either.