Now I’m certainly not going to start defending Chelsea’s players or the reactions of certain fans after the final whistle back on May 6th. Yes, the referee had a nightmare, yes Chelsea should have had two penalties at least and yes to some people it was easy to understand the reactions of some of the players after Tom Henning Ovrebo’s performance that night.It doesn’t excuse the behaviour of the players and fans after the game at all.
What I am astounded at is UEFA fining Chelsea £85,000 for failure to control their players and fans. Not because I disagree with it, but because UEFA continually ignore the issue of racism at football matches and issue a stream of pathetic, pointless little fines to teams who allow they’re fans to pollute football with their backward mentality towards non-white players. When you look at Chelsea’s punishment and then consider it in the scheme of failure to control players and fans, you’ll see what I mean.
In UEFA’s little world, racism isn’t an issue that warrants serious attention. They pretend it doesn’t happen and we’re all one big happy footballing family. Two years ago, England Under 21’s were fined £2000 for failure to control thier players after taking exception to Serbia’s players and fans who had racially abused the black members of the England Under 21 team throughout and after their European Championship match in 2007. Serbia were fined £16,500 and allowed to continue in the competition. This is UEFA’s zero tolerance approach to racism, paltry fines and allowing racist idiots to continue to perform.
In 2004, England’s black players were heckled throughout the 90 minutes of a “friendly” against Spain in Madrid at the Bernabeu Stadium. The Spanish FA were fined the crippling amount of £44,500 from a game that generated 4 million pounds. 1% of the revenue that match created for the Spanish F.A . Once again, UEFA showed zero tolerance. That’ll show them won’t it?
Of course some Croatia fans infamously formed a human swastika in 2006 during a game against Italy but were only fined £10,000 even though it was the third racist incident by their fans in 4 years. Once again, UEFA showed zero tolerance.
It astounds me that the UEFA continue to punish clubs and players so leniently and then wonder why incidents still happen in certain countries. When a club receives a bigger fine for showing petulance and anger towards a match official than teams that unfurl racist, anti-muslim or anti-semitic slogans and banners at games then it shows how scared to tackle the issue they really are.
Of course Chelsea didn’t do themselves any favours by their behaviour that night, but does it justify a fine of such a value when compared to far more unsavoury incidents? For UEFA to punish Chelsea so sternly in comparison is an easy decision by UEFA. It’s an easy way out for them as it was so widely publicised around the world but in the scheme of football what causes the game more damage? Racist morons or emotionally charged football fans?
Drogba though is rather lucky in my opinion to have only received a 4 game ban from European competition; though he does have the threat of a further two games that have been suspended if he oversteps the mark again. Boswinga, who rightly apologised after calling the referee a cheat in the Portuguese media, strangely received a 3 match ban. He withdrew his comments as quickly as he had made them and even rang Overbo to apologise, so can feel harshly done by in comparison to Drogba. Michael Ballack meanwhile is quite possibly the luckiest player at Stamford Bridge, as he’s got away scot free for his body checking and pulling of the referee. Perhaps they were impressed with his star jumps?
In UEFA’s mind, swearing at a referee or calling him a cheat is a worse offence than racially abusing someone and that for me is a sad indictment of the governing bodies attitude to the fight against racism in football. Until they get their priorities right and throw teams out of competitions or hit them with seven figure fines, the racists will continue to abuse and divide. Now that is the real disgrace about Chelsea’s fine.
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Wale Akinremi
September 14, 2009 at 8:07 am
UEFA is without doubt toothless. They obviously had an agenda. Sincerely, the beautiful ones are not yet born. If I were in the shoes of the Chelsea players, I would never retract Drogba’s comment. TOM is simply a disgrace to football. To err is human, but to deliberately cheat others is devilish. What else do you call Ovrebo if not a day-light robber. I can never forger that shameless idiot. We complain about refereeing in Africa and we then turned to EUROPE thinking they were better; now we are wiser. What history is he going to tell his children about that match. If I were in UEFA’s shoes (not this lame duck)Ovrebo should be banned ad-infinitum, not just that I should be charged for criminally bringing the game into disrepute. Tom Henning Ovrebo is football;s Lucifer. He should be confined to a Zoological garden for the public to pay for token to have a gaze at ANIMAL IN HUMAN SKIN.
anton
June 20, 2009 at 12:05 am
how dare drogba speak out against what was obviously a sham. Drogba and bosingwa began to expose platini’s underhanded schemes and they were swiftly crushed lest anyone question bad refereees again. Ballack should have been fined if anyone. But more than likely ovre-suck only mentioned droga in his post-match report. Interesting isn’t it.
Uefa has never been serious about racism. racist fans should be 95% of earnings forfeited.
doug.is.a.kopite
June 19, 2009 at 6:13 pm
i actually agree with what the above chelsea supporter, GIBurrows, says to a certain extent. can i just point out that the goal that never was is impossible to prove either way to be honest but the closest approximation is that from one of the camera angles the clearing foot is more than a balls width behind the line. im still prepared to admit that it is not 100% garuanteed that the goal was a goal. However twice inside the penalty area Sami Hyypia was brought down by severe unsporting behaviour in the semi final of 2007 in the space of seconds. The first or the second instance as he attempted to continue to play should have been given as a penalty. no major fuss was made at the time by liverpool players and as a result no major fuss was made by the media to draw attention to this being the reason that liverpool were unable to face man u in the final.
having cleared this point up which seems to even the score over the ‘goal that never was’ incident i have to say that it seems to me that in football there are many hidden agendas that most of us are not privvy too (and certainly not involved in the profits of).
any team that is successful, it appears, will invariably achieve an advantage over their opposition in all areas of the game due to the requirement of the media to keep interest high.
i dont want to go into huge depth at this point but you can sort of catch my drift when i say that a club like man u who has won so many titles must be assisted to win as much more as they can in order to create a media monster that will drive merchandise and viewing numbers through the roof. we are afflicted with many people who do not have grounded allegance to one club and will quite happily become arsenal supporters all of a sudden should they begin stringing a few cup wins together. these people may have been chelsea supporters before. man u has always had a large support base as does liverpool worldwide. but factor in all the glory hunters and you have a beast that gathers money at an alarming rate. this will subside if results dip for too long and many money hungry parties will be out of pocket. for this reason it is essential that as many questionable decisions should go the way of the juggernaut team to enable them to recover from a losing position.
it does worry me that when my club strings 2 or 3 premiership victories together it will all of a sudden start to become too easy as we are more and more assisted to put money in greedy cheating pockets.
this is a disgrace and has no place in competitive sports of any kind.
doug.is.a.kopite
June 19, 2009 at 5:54 pm
yes agree with the story. i would be very unhappy with my team if they ever behaved anywhere near the shocking behaviour of chelsea in that particular game.
appropriate punishment wouldnt necessarily be to ban the club from the champions league, but banning the worst offenders in drogba and ballack and also fining them an appropriate percentage of their salary for the extreme influence they have on such a large audience (especially kids who are future footballers) would be more appropriate.
not as an alternative but in addition the club should be allowed to take part in the competition (without drogba or ballack) and do so knowing that they are not entitled to any prize money or funding arising from their involvement at all for the whole season other than their portion of actual gate receipts. this would cause enough concern to ensure that clubs would ‘control’ their players and also serve as a strong enough warning for other potential loose cannons.
incidentally, having watched the game and been appalled by the tactics of chelsea who are apparently deservedly a european force. i can honestly say without bias that they did not actually have 2 penalty claims. there was one possible claim but if you weigh up the way they carried themselves throughout the game up until the point where they lost it completely i think you can safely agree that they would not have deserved the chance to score from the penalty spot if that had led to them advancing to the final. football would have in fact lost out if they had gone through and thats a comment made without consideration to the further abusive and outright rediculous behaviour.
i hope that kids and general football supporters all recognise them as the clowns they are
GIBurrows
June 19, 2009 at 5:17 am
I must state that I am a Chelsea supporter and was losing heart and passion for the game as we have way too many money hungry players with no substance, back bone or passion for the club, but with the display of so called petulance and lack of respect towards the referee I have found it all coming back to me as we haven’t seen an injustice like this for years (well since the goal that wasn’t against Liverpool) UEFA really do have their own agenda I’m not saying football is fixed, but how can it not be with a performance like that from a UEFA official……..?
Disgusted and praying for the G14 to re unite!! UEFA are the new Hitler regime.
Ben
June 18, 2009 at 1:42 am
A fantastic point it’s a shame people like g.wright while having obvious literary skills doesn’t have the fraction of common sense and intelligence to see that this is a post drawing comparisons. There is no mention of a connection between racism and UEFAs decision. All it says is Chelsea have more of a punishment for emotionally charged behaviour than countries recieve for racially chafed behaviour, asking which is worse. Internet blogs are full of nobodies trying to make themselves feel good by putting others down. Just goes to show how shamefully inept their lives must be.
Johnny
June 17, 2009 at 9:06 pm
After a typo in the headline it is indeed difficult to take this article seriously. The author has a decent point…but he doesn’t make it very clear in the beginning.
Matt
June 17, 2009 at 9:03 pm
You people need to get your heads screwed on correctly. The writer is simply trying to make a point that racism is not treated with the severity it deserves by the UEFA administration. The fines given to Chelsea for a reaction that ANY CLUB would have displayed given the circumstance were much greater than unprovoked malicious racial outbursts displayed by certain clubs. If what happen to Chelsea happen to Man United, Wayne Rooney would have punched the referee out cold.
Gaurav
June 17, 2009 at 7:15 pm
What a brilliant article. Absolute nail on the head here.
Tyson
June 17, 2009 at 7:04 pm
If you don’t like the website don’t read here then your just making yourself look like a pathetic little asswipe whoose life has amounted to spotting spelling mistakes on blogs.
This is a blog as long as people can make sense of what your saying it mkaes no dierfefnce how you wtrie it.
Don’t try and be smart when you clearly don’t know how language works.
This is a great article. Touches on a subject we try to avoid in football but it is a reoccuring theme.
In the long term little cracks like this weather into much bigger problems.
As football is growing on a worldwide stage and progressing to non-European nations and international powerhouse nations like China and India this inherent racism in the game is going to eventually destroy the corrupt organisation that UEFA are.
UEFA is corrupt and only cares about money and maximising it. They’ve been behind some very fishy decisions in the past and it just goes to show they don’t have any grip on the business model they are trying to execute on a global scale.
G. Wright
June 17, 2009 at 6:57 pm
He’d make his point better if he could write.
Look no further than the main headline itself… and the word Show’s (with an apostrophe s). What a joke. Why are we subjected to such illiterates posing as writers?
Sheeraz
June 17, 2009 at 6:51 pm
You retards, he is trying to make a point. He is saying that teams are fined much less for racism, than Chelsea were for the failure to control their players.
G. Wright
June 17, 2009 at 5:59 pm
I can barely believe what I have just read. This ranks amongst the most worthless articles I have ever seen on a (supposedly) serious football website. The writer not only makes a fool of himself, but wastes the time of his readers by presenting them with tripe.
The twisted, contrived inclusion of racism into the writer’s argument results in a piece that would be laughable if not for its ineptitude.
Eugene
June 17, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Chelsea get fined and have vital players banned and a totally incompetent referee who cost them a place in the Champions League final with the football glory and financial reward that goes with it, gets off without a reprimand or an investigation into his conspiracy provoking performance . Where is the justice there ? I rest my case ! ! !
Brett Cox
June 17, 2009 at 5:42 pm
The question of Ballack is simple: the incident was handled on the field with a yellow card, and Ballack created no further infraction, so further punishment was not mandated within UEFA/FIFA rules.
The monetary fine is excessive compared to other judgements, and 3 matches for Bosingwa “unusual.”
Never the less, I am sure Chelsea will be happy to sweep it under the carpet in the group stages. Drogba is the biggest loss but they do have Anelka to lead the line for the first 4 games.
Alex
June 17, 2009 at 5:41 pm
David i don’t think you actually read the above article, next time learn to read something properly before you start calling others an idiot ! Very good piece of writing, i totally agree regarding the club and country debate as its easier to punish an individual club then a countries football federation. Im a Chelsea supporter and totally stand by Chelsea and all players which stepped out of line, the game was fixed and UEFA should be looking at them selves and having an internal inquiry as to why such an incompetent referee was assigned to such an important game.
Chazza
March 3, 2010 at 10:14 am
Absolutely 150% correct. Football is all about masonic money laundering,
hence “The Champions Lodge” Tom Overboard Henning is a modern day “Zadok the priest” check out the masonic champions league theme tune !!
Overboard did the same thing to Fiorentina against Bayern just a couple of weeks back .. scum !!
Lindy
June 17, 2009 at 5:32 pm
I’m a Chelsea fan. My question is why was Ballack not even cited for his manhandling of the ref while what Drogba did wasn’t even in the same league as Big Brother or Gordon Ramsay? Anyone have an opinion? Is it because the German national team needs him and the African teams don’t figure on UEFA’s list of what’s important and what’ s not?
DAVID NOTT
June 17, 2009 at 5:26 pm
you must be some kind of idiot.
what happened to chelsea in respect to the fine has absolutly nothing to do with racism.
it is utter rubbish that you write i will make sure i do not go to your site again
speedypoint
June 18, 2009 at 3:17 am
Mate ,either you don’t know how to read or have an IQ comparable to George W. Bush this article is not about why chelsea were fined or if it’s correct or not it’s about the fact UEFA refuses to deal with racism in football. They have a respect campaign for refree’s where is a similar campaign against racism.