FIFA Secretary General Fatma Samoura said on Tuesday (May 9) that football’s governing body has zero tolerance to racism in the wake of Sulley Muntari suffering abuse in Italy.
The Ghanaian was booked for complaining and walked off the pitch after receiving racial abuse from the stands while playing for Pescara against Cagliari and was subsequently banned by the Italian FA before his suspension was overturned.
Samoura was speaking as FIFA’s senior officials gathered in Manama, Bahrain, for their annual congress.
FIFA hold an executive council meeting on Tuesday (May 9) ahead of congress on Thursday, and one of the items on the agenda is a dispute between Israel and Palestine. Palestine resents six Israeli clubs being present on its territory, while the Israelis say they have done nothing wrong.
“I don’t have to call people any time they have been victim of an abuse. We have a committee that is in charge of monitoring those actions, and we will take action. And we have been very severe in Europe, in Latin America, we have been regularly publicising the action of the committee, every action that relates to racist action, the homophobic chant to any kind of discrimination. And once again, it is not the task force that is taking the action, and is fighting discrimination. They had a task to perform, they made a recommendation and FIFA went even beyond the full recommendation. We have a monitoring tool on anti discrimination, we have heavy sanctions every time we have been receiving reports, I don’t have to call individual people.”
Former FIFA Presidential candidate Tokyo Sexwale is tasked with finding a solution to the dispute, with his job potentially made harder with media reports Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intervened by calling FIFA President Gianni Infantino.
Sexwale said he didn’t know if the reports were accurate, but said he was confident of finding common ground after his experiences in South Africa following the end of apartheid.
