![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Blatter.jpg\" "\\"Blatter\\"")
Fifa president Sepp Blatter is facing calls to step down after he said racist incidents in football matches could be settled with a handshake at the end of the game.<\/h4>\nFifa president Sepp Blatter is facing calls to step down after he said racist incidents in football matches could be settled with a handshake at the end of the game.<\/h4>\nGordon Taylor, head of the Professional Footballers’ Association, told Sky News the comments were “disgraceful”.<\/p>\n
“He has presided over a lot of issues that just haven’t been good enough,” he said. “If he’s going to be the leader of world football then I’m not going to be a follower.<\/p>\n
“I believe you can be kicked about, of course you have banter, but when that becomes racist, when that is prefaced with the colour of your skin, it is not acceptable.”<\/p>\n
Les Ferdinand – the older cousin of footballing brothers Anton and Rio – told Sky Sports News it was “about time we stopped hearing from him (Blatter)”.<\/p>\n
Asked if he believed the head of world football should now go, he said: “I certainly do.<\/p>\n
“Like a lot of these people, they don’t understand racism. It’s never happened to them so they’re making comments on a subject they know nothing about.”<\/p>\n
In two interviews, Mr Blatter appeared to make light of racial abuse between players during matches.<\/p>\n
“There is no racism. There is maybe one of the players towards another, he has a word or a gesture which is not the correct one, but also the one who is affected by that, he should say that this is a game,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We are in a game, and at the end of the game we shake hands, and this can happen, because we have worked so hard against racism and discrimination.”<\/p>\n
He later issued a\u00a0statement on Fifa’s website<\/strong><\/span><\/span>\u00a0claiming he had been “misunderstood”.<\/p>\n Mr Blatter said: “What I wanted to express is that, as football players, during a match, you have ‘battles’ with your opponents, and sometimes things are done which are wrong.<\/p>\n “Having said that, I want to stress again that I do not want to diminish the dimension of the problem of racism in society and in sport.<\/p>\n “I am committed to fighting this plague and kicking it out of football.”<\/p>\n The comments came as the FA charged Liverpool player Luis Suarez with racially abusing Manchester United’s Patrice Evra<\/strong><\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n The FA is also investigating claims that England captain John Terry racially abused QPR player Anton Ferdinand. Terry denies the allegation<\/strong><\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n Anton’s brother, Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand described Mr Blatter’s comments as “condescending” in remarks posted on Twitter.<\/p>\n He tweeted: “If fans shout racist chants but shake our hands is that OK?<\/p>\n “I feel stupid for thinking that football was taking a leading role against racism…..it seems it was just on mute for a while.”<\/p>\n The England player was also critical of Fifa’s attempts to clarify Mr Blatter’s comments with a statement on their website underneath a picture of the Fifa president with South African minister Tokyo Sexwale.<\/p>\n Mr Ferdinand wrote: “Fifa clear up the blatter comments with a pic of him posing with a black man…I need the hand covering eyes symbol!!”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Shaking hands doesn’t resonate with the zero-tolerance approach we encourage and certainly wouldn’t resonate with the victim of the abuse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Anti-racism campaign Kick It Out<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Fifa boss replied directly to the footballer saying: “The ‘black man’ as you call him has a name: Tokyo Sexwale. He has done tremendous work against racism and apartheid in Africa.”<\/p>\n The remarks have received widespread condemnation in the British media but little attention in newspapers elsewhere in Europe.<\/p>\n The FA-backed anti-racism groupKick It Out<\/strong>\u00a0was scathing about Mr Blatter’s remarks, accusing the Fifa president of being “worryingly out of touch”.<\/p>\n It said: “Shaking hands doesn’t resonate with the zero-tolerance approach we encourage and certainly wouldn’t resonate with the victim of the abuse.”<\/p>\n Mr Blatter recently won a fourth term as Fifa president, despite allegations of corruption among delegates.<\/p>\n Times sports writer Matthew Syed told Sky News: “It’s an astonishing intervention from Blatter.<\/p>\n “He has a track record of coming out with very ill-judged comments, we’ve seen it before with women’s clothing in football, gay rights in Qatar.<\/p>\n “And this is a really characteristic gaffe by somebody who many people who support football around the world cannot understand is in the position that he is.”<\/p>\n Ladbrokes have now slashed the odds of Mr Blatter being out of his current job by the New Year to 2\/1.<\/p>\n Sky<\/span><\/p>\n Fifa president Sepp Blatter is facing calls to step down after he said racist incidents in football matches could be settled with a handshake at the end of the game. Gordon Taylor, head of the Professional Footballers’ Association, told Sky News the comments were “disgraceful”. “He has presided over a lot of issues that just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":46786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3996,94,922],"tags":[6309,7499,7498,7501,7502,7500,2755],"class_list":["post-46784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport","category-uk","category-world","tag-fifa","tag-fifa-president","tag-fifa-president-sepp-blatter","tag-football-matches","tag-professional-footballers-association","tag-sepp-blatter","tag-sky-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46784\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/Ferdinand_terry.jpg\" "\\"Ferdinand_terry\\"")
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