- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
The outcry and sense of victimisation that has permeated the Liverpool Football Club in the wake of Luis Suarez’s racism conviction is disgraceful, and all associated with Wednesday’s T-shirt fiasco should be ashamed.
On Tuesday the Uruguayan striker was banned for eight matches and fined £40,000 after being found guilty of racially abusing Manchester United’s Patrice Evra after the two clubs met on October 15.
The judgement handed down by the commission has not been made public, but the case has largely centred around Suarez calling Evra ‘negrito’ at various stages throughout the match.
Liverpool’s response was one of outrage, and the team responded by sporting T-shirts bearing Suarez’s name, number, and image during the warmup to their match at Wigan 24 hours after the decision.
Debate has exploded in the days following, and it has been difficult to separate objective discussion from emotionally-charged tribalism between fans of various Premier League clubs.
The defence of Suarez has centred around the term ‘negrito’ being an affectionate rather than offensive term in Suarez’s native South America, and Liverpool have repeatedly pointed to Suarez’s own ethnic origin as evidence that the striker could not possibly be racist.
They’re completely missing the point.
The question isn’t whether Suarez himself is racist, but whether or not ‘negrito’ constitutes a racist term.
In England, and certainly on a broader level in Europe, it unquestionably does, and it makes the ‘Free Luis’ T-shirt stunt Liverpool pulled on Wednesday night absolutely abhorrent.
By playing the victim, Liverpool are thumbing their nose at the considerable anti-discrimination work that has made the English Premier League the benchmark when it comes to stamping out racism.
It seems implausible, but Suarez may very well have not understood his remarks to be racist.
Liverpool could have come out in the aftermath of the judgement and admitted as much and said that Suarez now understood that these comments had absolutely no place on a football field, reaffirming their own anti-racist stance in the process.
They’ve missed that opportunity now and, short of Patrice Evra admitting the comments were a fabrication, Liverpool will be forever tainted as the club who put a few insignificant points ahead of the greater cause of anti-discrimination.
Are you the ultimate team manager? Pick your own superstar team and go head to head with other football fans for glory and cash prizes on Draftstars. Imagine what you could be buying instead. Set a deposit limit.