Chelsea star Anita Asante calls on football to lead fight on ‘cultural problem’ with racism

Chelsea defender Anita Asante
Getty Images for Chelsea FC
Richard Parry7 September 2019

Chelsea defender Anita Asante believes football highlights a ‘cultural problem’ with racism and has called on the sport’s governing bodies to lead the fightback with harsher punishments.

Despite being a little over a month into the professional season there have already been five high-profile cases of racism within the sport, with Paul Pogba , Tammy Abraham , Kurt Zouma and Romelu Lukaku all being subjected to abuse.

Meetings have been held with social media publishers such as Twitter in a bid to rid the online abuse from the game, but Asante believes the disease of racism runs deeper than just sport.

“It’s not a football problem,” the former England international told NewsChain. “Football highlights the problem because it’s so popular and it’s on TV, online, it’s everywhere.

“But it’s a society issue, a cultural issue. And football has the opportunity to find and discuss ways to deter the people who are discriminating.”

But while the roots of racism are bedded in society, the weeds are certainly sprouting out into football.

Prince William, the president of the FA, admitted earlier this week that he was becoming ‘fed up’ with racism in the game and that something has to be done to extinguish it.

But Asante questions whether the situation has improved within the game at all, and called on authorities to impose heavier sanctions on those involved.

“Over time there’s been this assumption that racism, discrimination, all these things have vastly improved,” she continued.

“But the reality is it really hasn’t. We have never really looked at how many people voice when these things happen to them. Is it happening less? Or are people not speaking up?"

“In terms of football and the governing bodies that run the game, I think that the FA, the Premier League, Uefa, Fifa, all these institutions need to start delivering harsher penalties for sports fans who are racially abusing players.

“They’re very slow to move sometimes and they’re reluctant to do those things. But if these are true supporters of the game and they get a three year, four year, life-time ban then they’re not going to do it."

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