Aamer Anwar calls for zero tolerance from UEFA
Glen Kamara’s lawyer Aamer Anwar was on the White & Jordan Show (talkSPORT, Monday, 10.30am) this morning talking about the ongoing fallout from the Europa League game between Rangers and Slavia Prague on Thursday.
Glen Kamara said he was racially abused by Ondrej Kudela and was backed up by Steven Gerrard after the game.
Slavia Prague have denied this but a voice recording made headlines on Saturday after their keeper seemingly confirmed Kamara’s version of events.
“What now, where is this going to go?” said Jim White.
“Have you noticed Aamer, Slavia Prague back in their country now, their goalkeeper Premysl Kovar appears to confirm that Kudela said what [Kamara claimed] in a sensational voice recording.
“This was released on social media and it might blow their claim out of the water that Kudela didn’t racially abuse Glen.
“After this blew up on social media he went to great lengths to deny that he’d confirmed the racist abuse. This is going in all sorts of directions now. Where are you going with it?”
“Slavia Prague were extremely defensive,” said Anwar, “and released a robust statement but that fell apart within seconds of reading it.
“Glen is horrified and shocked, you can see from the instant reaction… [What Kudela said afterwards] was an outright lie.
This was premeditated. It was so loud for Zungu to hear what was said. When you look at the reactions of the two black players from Slavia Prague, they’re not moving to help Kudela.
“It’s time to take a zero-tolerance approach.”
White asked if Slavia Prague should be “kicked out of the competition before they play Arsenal”.
“Their actions were extremely defensive,” Anwar said. “They haven’t apologised. It’s not good enough.”
UEFA must take action
Slavia Prague should be kicked out of the Europa League if they are found guilty, there are no two ways about it, but we’re not convinced they will be.
This isn’t even about getting Rangers re-instated. The Kamara issue is much bigger than. that and much more important.
UEFA have a pretty poor track record when it comes to dealing with racism and while there will be an investigation we’re not confident it will be dealt with in a manner that will be acceptable to Rangers, to Kamara and to fans around the world who have been repulsed by what happened on Thursday.
While the investigation is still open we’ll give UEFA the benefit of the doubt and it’s now such a high-profile case that there’s a possibility that they take the initiative and show the world what needs to happen in these cases.
If UEFA don’t do this, then serious questions need to be asked around the governance of the game.
Incidents such as Thursday’s just can’t be allowed to happen on or off the football pitch.
In other Rangers news, Sky Sports pundit stunned by what happened in key incident from Rangers clash v Celtic