Friday, March 2, 2007

Emre Belozoglu

Another upcoming case. Emre is accused of racially abusing several players, including Everton's Joseph Yobo, and Watford's Al Bangura. It seems unlikely that the Bangura incident will result in charges owing to a shortage of evidence. The FA (according to the Guardian) insists that their disciplinary committee is too experienced to be influenced by media coverage of the case. The hearing is scheduled for mid-March.

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Again, I don't want to prejudge anything here. I will parrot the line that racism has absolutely no place in football and that if Emre is found guilty, should be heavily punished. That said, the charge is a serious one and needs to be considered very carefully - I don't hold a lot of truck with the idea that if you accuse someone of something often enough, he must have been guilty at least once; on the other hand, I don't want to believe that professional footballers would simply make shit like this up. I would find it hard to credit that there were no cameras pointing anywhere near the players involved, but there's no mention of video evidence, only of the FA writing to Yobo's team-mates to get their version of events.

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