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Sei tifosi dell’ Huddersfield ( foto ) sono stati diffidati per quattro anni per il presunto coinvolgimento negli incidenti contro il Leicester accaduti nell’ ottobre del 2008. Ciascuno dei condannati dovrà anche svolgere cento ore di lavori socialmente utili non retribuiti e versare come ammenda 900 sterline. Intanto un tabloid discute circa le sanzioni erogate dall’ UEFA verso quei club i cui tifosi creano tafferugli in occasione della disputa delle sfide di “Champions’ League” ed “Europa League”; continua, infatti, il dibattito tra chi ritiene le sanzioni erogate eccessive , soprattutto quelle causate da semplici cori, e chi sostiene che detto organo, al di là di roboanti proclami contro la violenza e la discriminazione, non punisca adeguatamente le società coinvolte.
Huddersfield Town yobs banned from football matches after clashes with police
Huddersfield Examiner
14 November 2009
SIX Huddersfield Town hooligans have been banned from following their team for four years after they were involved in violent clashes with police.The men were captured on CCTV cameras during a disturbance in the Market Street area of Huddersfield after their side lost to Leicester City back in October 2008.Prosecutor Simon Myers told Bradford Crown Court yesterday how shoppers and families with young children were frightened when a large group of men confronted police shortly after the match had ended.The court heard that bottles and traffic cones were thrown during the confrontation and the atmosphere was antagonistic and intimidating.Four men pleaded guilty to affray.They are Carl Walker, 27, of New Hey Road, Marsh; Edward Hunt, 20, of Brighouse Wood Lane, Brighouse; Jonathon Hellings, 20, Halifax Road, Liversedge and Jonathon Patterson, 20, of Grange Court, Halifax.Two others – 20-year-old Kierran Kavanagh, 20, of Stockwell Vale, Armitage Bridge, and Thomas Wilson, 30, of Leeds Road, Bradley, admitted threatening behaviour.Judge Jonathon Durham Hall QC told them they were responsible for “oikish, disrespected and downright disgraceful behaviour’’.He said the public was sick to death of such behaviour and they would be outraged by it.The court heard that the men were hard-working and Walker was a degree student in London.The football banning orders imposed against each defendant will mean they cannot go within a mile of Town’s ground on match days and they must also stay away from the railway station during specific periods when Town play home matches.Judge Durham Hall also ordered that each should be subject to a three-month electronically-monitored curfew which restricts their movements at weekends.Each must also do 100 hours unpaid work for the community and pay £900 in costs and a fine.Although Judge Durham Hall said he did not want to spend £35,000 sending each of the men to prison for a year, he also did not want the public to think it had been anything other than a very expensive and unpleasant day for the defendants.He added that he had taken account of the men’s guilty pleas and the length of time since the offences in deciding not to jail them.
Tom English: ‘UEFA’s vows on racism are about as hollow as its threats to Rangers’
Scotland on Sunday
15 November 2009
Tom English
THE MEN of UEFA live in a parallel universe, a place of privilege and certainty, a world where nobody questions anybody or anything and where everything they do is right and proper. They’re the Stepford Blazers, their righteous path illuminated by the Nyon lights.So you end up with a situation whereby Michel Platini announces a zero tolerance policy against racism, where he bangs a table and puts on an angry face and says he is drawing a line in the sand against the bigots and will bring down the Sword of Damocles on the animals who abuse players. And everybody stands and applauds. All those UEFA officials congratulate Platini and say pity those racists of European football when Michel gets his hands on them. Oh yes. In their world, Platini becomes a hardliner on racism simply because he says he is, even though he is not, even though there are countless examples of UEFA being woefully weak on the haranguing of black players in its competitions.But that’s our interpretation, not UEFA’s. Parallel universe, folks. Before Platini assumed office in Switzerland, these were the type of things that went on. Real Madrid were fined ?9,700 (£8,700) for their fans’ constant racist chants and Nazi salutes in a game against Bayer Leverkusen. Brugge were fined a little under £8,000 for abusing black players against Utrecht. The Slovakians were fined £27,000 – basically, a pound a racist -for constant monkey chants directed at England’s Emile Heskey and Ashley Cole. “It wasn’t just one section of the stadium, it was the whole stadium,” said Heskey.Those were the bad old days, of course. Since then, Platini was voted into the top job at UEFA on the back of a campaign of getting tough on the people who drag football into the gutter. The zero-tolerance policy has been introduced and here are the results.In March last year, the fans of Zenit St Petersburg gorged themselves on a feast of bigotry when Marseille travelled to Russia for a UEFA Cup tie. Bananas were thrown onto the pitch at Marseille’s black players and there was wholesale monkey chanting and all manner of foul behaviour. Zenit fans revelled in their policy of refusing to accept black players at their club. For their actions, they were fined ?36,000 (£32,200). They went on to win a competition they should have been thrown out of had Platini been true to his hardline rhetoric.That’s one example of many of UEFA’s supposed hardline attitude. There are many, many others. That’s its zero tolerance in action. This is what Platini said: “Football must teach values to Europe – honesty, courage, fraternity, tolerance and peace. Football includes, integrates, and welcomes. It excludes no one, it discriminates against no one, it persecutes no one.”There are many black players around Europe who could challenge Platini on that assertion, but what’s the point? He’s convinced he is right. Everybody around him is convinced he is right. They all think that a ?36,000 fine is a proper punishment, a message to the bigots, a deterrent.On Thursday, UEFA’s control and disciplinary committee handed down an ?20,000 (£17,900) fine to Rangers for the behaviour of some of their fans in Bucharest. To many – including a lot of fretful Rangers fans – this was a major let-off for the club, a gentle slap on the wrist when some were half-expecting something more severe. This was Rangers’ third time in the dock after all. And that’s not counting the riots of Manchester in May 2008, a full-scale horror show that UEFA washed its hands of.In UEFA’s book, 18 grand is about right for what happened in Bucharest. No fans invaded the pitch, no players or officials were attacked, the match wasn’t halted or abandoned. These are the things it looks out for more than anything else. It has been genuinely tough on teams who’ve messed with the “sanctity of the playing area”. The pitch, says one UEFA official, is a “holy place”. Clearly, the same attitude does not extend to the terraces, where you can chant what you like and throw what you like without having to face the full rigour of UEFA justice.Celtic, for instance, got fined £25,000 when one of their fans ran on to the “holy place” and brushed his hand off the head of Dida in the AC Milan goal. Fair enough, they deserved a real sanction. But it’s a strange kind of justice that sees that offence as more serious than what happened in Bucharest – even allowing for the mitigation of aggressive stewarding at the stadium in Romania.UEFA’s vows on racism – “we will abandon games and dock points and throw teams out of major championships,” says Platini – are about as hollow as its threats to Rangers to come down heavy on them if they repeat offend. In Platini’s world, UEFA believes that its words pack a punch, it believes that Rangers’ fans will be cowed by the fine. It says that a ?20,000 fine for Rangers is a serious punishment. Zenit, after all, didn’t get a whole lot more despite their hateful behaviour against Marseille. The point here, though, is that UEFA routinely sets the punishment bar so low for these offences that any comparison is rendered ridiculous.The lack of morality within UEFA can be told through many different stories. Here’s one. In 2006, a group of Middlesbrough fans, women and children included, were set upon in Rome ahead of a UEFA Cup match against Roma that same evening. Three were stabbed. The visiting fans were also attacked inside the stadium as the match was going on. A couple of years ago, Manchester United fans were targeted by Roma thugs. Earlier this year an Arsenal supporter was stabbed outside Roma’s Stadio Olimpico.Roma fans are notorious in Italy. They have a charge sheet in Serie A as long as your arm and they show little sign of learning their lesson. And yet when UEFA sits down to decide which club should host the 2009 Champions League final they gave the showpiece match to Roma. Some Sword of Damocles, eh?Some say that Rangers got lucky last week. UEFA disagrees and in its delusion we know everything we need to know about its zero tolerance.
