Why Sol Campbell is Wrong (But Mostly Right)

By: Daryl | March 3rd, 2009

Sol Campbell has an interesting idea to combat racism: If fans give out racist abuse, then their club should be docked three points.

Before we argue about that, here’s his complete quote from The Guardian:

“I think that they [the game's authorities] are going to have to do more,” said Campbell. “My situation is a small part. But also, you have the racial abuse in the rest of Europe. The only way you can stop it from happening is by taking points from clubs. Then it would definitely stop. If it’s just way over the top and you start taking points … [with] those three points, you can lose the championship or you can be going down. That’s the only way you can stop fans’ abuse on that type of level.

“There is all sorts up and down the league, there is always someone saying something or part of the crowd saying something to certain players, but there is a level and once that level is crossed, I think people have to step in and sort it out.

“Football seems to think it can keep on going without getting checked. In most other sports on this level, it doesn’t happen. You’re not going to get that in tennis, rugby, cricket or athletics. It’s just not accepted.”

I’m not sure I 100% agree with the Sol-man here. Mostly because clubs can’t be held 100% responsible for the behaviour of their fans. Would be nice if they could, but it’s not all that realistic.

Plus, in an extreme example, what’s to stop fans of rival teams sneaking in and racially abusing players in order to deliberately get a few points deducted from that team’s total.

I’d argue that the punishment of points deduction is too harsh for something that clubs don’t have total control of.

However, where we can all agree with Sol Campbell is that something has to change. And it will change if the authorities start taking stronger action.

Right now clubs and FAs get miniscule, laughable fines. Zenit St Petersburg were fined just 37,000 euros after their fans racially abused Marseille’s players in last season’s UEFA Cup, and the Croatian FA were fined just 30,000 Swiss francs after England’s Emile Heskey was abused in last year’s WC2010 qualifier.

For comparison purposes, those two fines combined wouldn’t even come close to paying Cristiano Ronaldo’s wages for a week. If it was C-Ron himself that had to go and collect those fines and you were going to let him keep all the money tax-free, he wouldn’t even bother getting out of bed.

So I’d like to see the fines go up. Way up. To at least ten times the amount. Clubs and FAs can afford to throw away 30,000 euros, pounds or Swiss francs and think nothing of it. Which seems to be exactly what they do. But if idiot fans are suddenly costing the club/FA more than a quarter million per incident, then they’d be pretty quick to stamp it out.