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.

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Category: World Football

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Footballer

All else has proven to be ineffective. DOCK THE POINTS AND BAN THE OFFENDERS FOR LIFE!!!
Sam

Yeah, it makes no sense at all to dock points, that would fuck over clubs when there is nothing they can do about it. Let whoever is racist get the shit kicked out of them by the players they're targeting.
adas

the clubs are responsible for the safety of the fans. If fans are screaming racist comments at a player on the field, what's to stop that from happening to a black fan of the opposing team sitting in the stadium. That's how violence starts, and then fans get hurt. The clubs may not care much if a rival team's player has his feelings hurt. But if fans in the stadium start getting injured, that's when lawsuits come in.
john

Here's a system that could work: Make sure that all ticket sales are seat coded and ask for identification upon the sale of said seat. When a fan or group of fans start hurling racist abuse, stadium authorities pull out camcorders and get faces on video. Then by comparing seat numbers to who sold the tickets, you'd at least have a chance of identifying the culprits. Then you ban them from games, if not for life then at least three years.

I realize this would still be far from perfect, especially when you take scalpers and seat swapping into consideration. But at least it would show that the club was making an effort.

Good to see people giving this issue some consideration. Where I agree most with Campbell is that other sports have all but eliminated racist chanting - what's taking football so long?
Jeremy

I don't think the club should be penalized for the fans' actions. Then they have to spend time judging what was racist and what was not. Who is to decide something that deep during a soccer match? Let them play
Andy

oh phff, my point has already being raised in the article, nevermind!
Andy

I think docking points might spur racism even more. Whats not to prevent a rival fan from deliberately spew hurtful words? If it can level the league standing, some fans will use this to gain competitive edge.
Shazback

I agree fines need to be much more massive, but FAs need to take much stronger measures to give these people (especially repeat offenders) long-term stadium bans.
Wes

Dock the points. Solutions in the past have been penalizing clubs to playing to empty home stadiums, so this is not so far off.
Rob

You'd have to be pretty brave to be a non supporter and then sit in with thousands of fans who would be supremely pissed off you could cost their team points wouldn't you?
bobby_digital

racism should never be tolerated at all. i think the docking of points is a bit much, but it maybe the only real solution. However, they should definitely raise fine amounts and completely ban all fans from coming to the stadium for a period time, sort of like what they do in spain and italy.
Mike

I partially agree with raising the fines. Yeah plenty of clubs can just throw 30.000 out there, but there are some that can't spare half that. I think the fines (if they're raised) should be sort of like the graduated income tax we have in the U.S. While I know that's plagued with problems, I think it could work alright in football. The poor team on the bottom of the table with a 45.000 pound transfer budget would be fined X small(ish) ammount, while Man. Utd. table topping-dog-bowl-selling-giants are fined upwards of 400.000 pounds or something. I'm just throwing figures out there that are coming straight from my ass, but you see what I mean, right?