FIFA president again demands automatic forfeits for teams over racist abuse

08 February 2024 , 10:14

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President of FIFA Gianni Infantino speaks at the UEFA congress (Image: Photo by JULIEN DE ROSA/AFP via Getty Images)

FIFA president Gianni Infantino believes football is "not doing enough" to eradicate racism from the game.

Infantino, 53, was speaking at the annual UEFA congress in Paris on Thursday where he reiterated his desire for worldwide stadium bans fans and automatic forfeits for teams whose supporters are found to have committed racist abuse. He also called on countries to compile a holistic plan to tackle racism before FIFA's Council in Bangkok in May.

The start of the year has seen a number of abhorrent displays of racism across the game. Fans aimed monkey chants at AC Milan and France goalkeeper Mike Maignan during a win at Udinese, with the game temporarily halted, while police in England investigated after Coventry midfielder Kasey Palmer was targeted with racist abuse during a match at Sheffield Wednesday. Lazio were hit with a one-match stand closure after supporters directed monkey chants at Romelu Lukaku during their team’s Italian Cup win over local rivals Roma.

The ongoing racist displays have been condemned by high-profile figures across the game, including Arsenal and England legend Ian Wright who called on teams to "keep walking off" when they hear abuse.

And Infantino doubled down on his desire to strengthen sanctions for racist abuse and claimed football was not taking enough responsibility to tackle the issue.

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"Ourworld is divided," he said on Thursday. "We’ve witnessed unfortunately a lot of racist incidents recently, this is not acceptable. We have to stop this and we have to do whatever we can to stop this. Racism is a crime, it’s terrible.

"We have to eradicate that. And we have some tools in place to do so. The problem is we have different competition organisers, rules, competitions and what we’re doing is not enough so we have to take responsibility for this."

Gianni Infantino, President of FIFA, poses with a EURO 2024 Match Ball with Aleksander Ceferin, President of UEFA, during the 48th UEFA Ordinary Congress Meeting (Aurelien Meunier - UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)

Infantino went on to describe a three-step process he hopes to instil across the game, beginning with the match official halting and, if required, abandoning the game.

The "disciplinary consequences" will be an automatic forfeit of the game for the team whose supporters or players were found to have committed the act, while "criminal charges" would be levied against those who acted in a racist way. He also called for "world-wide stadium bans" for those supporters.

"We have to invest in education because racism is a societal problem but that’s not enough, that’s not the answer," he continued. "So what I suggest to you is that we work together in the next three months, before the FIFA congress in May in Bangkok and we come to together with a strong resolution united altogether in the fight against racism.

"Let’s stop racism, let’s stop it now and let’s do it in a united way."

Megan Feringa