However, many people were against Blatter’s comments and said that racial abuse should be tackled and not accepted in today’s football. Many people’s comments which are against Blatter’s opinion follow the Lets Kick Racism out Of Football organisation recently launched to try to combat racism in football.
From the first article, my opinion of the article is that there are a lot of arguments within the context. These arguments back up Dwight Yorke stating that it was a wise decision to act on the matter rather than leave the racial comments because in my opinion, comments like “Theres only one lazy b*****d will over time, build and build and in the end this could lead to racial riots that would severely damage footballs reputation that would take a long time to regain. Dwight’s decision to act was very wise because if I was a coloured football player and racial comments were made to me, I would definitely act because it defies the point of racial equality in humans and can be very offensive to coloured football players.
The second article, taken from The Daily Mail on Wednesday 23rd November 2004 showed a different side to the incident. In this article, David Sullivan (Birmingham City Chairman) was interviewed about the incident. David Sullivan showed a different side to the incident than other people may have expected. Sullivan stated that Dwight Yorke may have looked into the situation a little too deeply and he should have not let it get to him as much as it did saying it was “All blown out of proportion”. From the statement above that Sullivan made, others did not share the same opinion; others thought the incident was totally unacceptable and everything should be done to put a stop to racial abuse in football.
David Sullivan very much put his opinion into perspective by saying “If you said to me”, “do you want someone to punch you in the face or make a racial comment?” “I’d take the comment” which in my opinion, is a fair comment because he compares racism with violence. With Sullivan’s side of the story clearly stated, he did say “It was inexcusable but it’s not the crime of the century” This showed that Sullivan at least thought the comments made to Dwight Yorke were unacceptable. One Blackburn Rovers fan added that he feels racism is wrong and should not be tolerated, so he thinks Dwight Yorke made the right choice in telling the Authorities and making a stand against the issue. He also added that he thought that David Sullivan would have shown more interest into the matter if he had to deal with the incident.
Assessing the second article, I think that as Chairman of Birmingham City, David Sullivan should have taken more interest in the incident.
In my opinion, I feel this is now important because the same situation could now occur in the club between Yorke and Sullivan as what happened with Yorke at Blackburn Rovers with former manager Graeme Souness. The pair never got along with each other which caused numerous arguments which led to a downfall in Dwight’s performance for the club. In the end, the situation at Rovers led the player to leave the club as he could not take any more from his manager.
If this was to happen with Sullivan and Yorke, it could leave Yorke looking for another club, which could lead Dwight Yorke to a decision of retiring from football as he would have no club to play for and he would have his age to consider.
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