FIFA misses opportunity over Heskey taunts

Emile Heskey has kopped a lot of abuse during his career.

He has spent much of his footballing life being castigated for, among others, his lack of touch, his poor goal scoring record, his erratic finishing and his tendency – despite being a man mountain – to go to ground far too easily.

Heskey has never seemed too bothered by theses tirades of vitriol thrown in his direction, shrugging it off in his diffident manner, but the kind of abuse he received when he turned out for England against Croatia in Zagreb earlier this month was of a totally different nature.

The racial abuse directed against Heskey, unfortunately not the first time our player have been subjected to such abuse when on national service in recent years, was about the only low point of a great night for England in the Maksimir Stadium.

It was a sickening display that has no place in the game whatsoever, and how did FIFA’s bigwigs respond when the Croatian Football Federation was summoned before them for punishment this week? A measly £15,000 fine.

It makes a total farce of the situation when, for all the rhetoric dolled out by the bodies that govern football over ‘kicking racism out of football’ and such like, when a real case does present itself they deal out little more than a slap on the wrist.

Now I know the Croatian Football Federation weren’t directly responsible – it’s not as if general secretary Zorislav Srebric was one of those making monkey chants when Heskey got booked - but what sort of message does it send out to the Balkan nation’s governing body who is responsible for punishing the actual perpetrators.

If the Croatian Football Federation was hit with a truly massive fan or banned from playing games in their home stadium, surely that would encourage them to get their act together and make sure they rid their national game of this – to borrow Heskey’s diplomatic term for describing the mindsets of his abusers - ‘ignorance’.

The problem is not just with the mindless minority who chant the abuse but also the greater majority of football fans in these countries (who, by the way, I’m not accusing of being racist whatsoever).

Let me expand, earlier this season when Exeter travelled to Bournemouth for a League Two match one idiotic away ‘fan’ took it upon himself to doll out racial abuse to two of Bournemouth’s black players.

When complaints were made about this Exeter accepted the abuse had taken place and that it came from a fan using a ticket allotted to their supporters.

Yes, they said, they would accept any punishment that came their way but the fact was several of their fans, their real supporters, had identified this man and they would be prosecuting him accordingly.

Now I’m not a social expert who can say whether there are more or less racist people in England or Croatia but what I can say is English football rarely has problems with racial discrimination.

That is because non-racist fans, the vast majority, will not tolerate those that are racist and will take action against them to make sure they are prosecuted.

I know the majority of Croatian fans are not racist but what I’m saying is their levels of tolerance appear to be significantly higher – at least on the evidence of that night at the Maksimir.

Now maybe if FIFA dropped the talking shop attitude that continues to define its rule and actually took some action by banning fans or moving home ties, maybe that would soon change the average Croatian fan’s attitude towards the abusive minority who were responsible for those sanctions.