Kick It Out Chair Defends Campaign
Anti-racism campaign Kick It Out has hit back at claims of a ‘lack of action’ following protests from a number of players including Manchester United’s Rio Ferdinand, with the chairman of the organisation, Lord Ouseley, pointing the finger at the country’s football authorities.
A number of players decided not to wear the Kick It Out t-shirt during the warm up of the weekend’s Premier League matches in protest of the lack of action from the organisation, despite 19 years of work to try and eliminate the problem from the professional game.
Ouseley told the Guardian website that the campaign was relatively powerless, when compared to the FA and Premier League.
‘We don’t make the decisions, we don’t run football. We are a small charity trying to help football come to terms with the reality of the 21st century. We can shout from the rooftops and I can understand what the black players are saying: you are too involved in the game in the way you operate to be independent and say the things that have to be said.’
‘The power and decision-making is with the Football Association and the Premier League. We all would have liked the John Terry case to have been wrapped up within days last October, alas it’s lasted a whole year and it has caused a lot of pain and grief.’
‘They know what has to be done. We’ve been knocking on their door for a long, long, long time so they know what their responsibilities are. The absence of their voices during all this has been noticeable.’
The FA responded by announcing that it continues to give its full backing to Kick It Out, however the governing body added that the decision of whether to support the charity remains an individual and club decision.
The decision by players not to wear Kick It Out shirts, which also included Rio’s brother Anton, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Sylvain Distin and Victor Anichebe, comes at the end of a difficult twelve months for football around racism.
The Terry-Anton Ferdinand incident in October 2011 came days after an altercation between Liverpool’s Luis Suárez and Manchester United’s Patrice Evra at Anfield, which saw the Uruguayan receive an eight-match ban and £40,000 fine after being found guilty of racial abuse by the FA.
More recently, last week the England Under-21 midfielder Danny Rose was subjected to monkey chants from a section of Serbia supporters in Krusevac.
Ouseley did not criticise the players who opted against wearing the shirts but he believes their dissatisfaction should be directed elsewhere, adding: ‘I can understand the irritation from the black players who feel they have grievances which have not been heard. They’ve turned their fire against Kick It Out as a sport campaign organisation that’s out there on the front line trying to bring about change but has not been able to sufficiently bring about it to satisfy them.’
‘Those players have every right to express their grievances. I think their grievances are misdirected at not wearing a T-shirt because I think the grievances are much more substantial. I think it’s with the game as a whole.’
