Michael Stewart rubbishes Rangers fan over Glen Kamara comments
Michael Stewart has given his verdict on Ondrej Kudela’s 10-game racism ban and responded to Rangers fans over his handling of the incident.
The controversial Sportsound pundit hit the headlines once again last month after the Slavia Prague defender racially abused Glen Kamara in their Europa League second-leg clash (March 18).
Rangers shareholders Club 1872 called on the BBC to sack Stewart after he claimed it was just speculation, a remark which drew the ire of ex-England international Rio Ferdinand on Twitter.
UEFA issued Kudela with a 10-match suspension on Wednesday, one of which has already been served, while they also handed a three-match ban to Kamara for an alleged attack in the tunnel after he had been racially abused.
On Thursday [15/04/21] Stewart broke his silence over the matter in a series of messages on his personal Twitter profile.
He said: “A 10 game ban is simply not strong enough for racist abuse on the park. Hopefully this can be a turning point for harsher sanctions to follow and perhaps we could look to tackle the domestic issues we have with the same intensity that everyone clearly approves of now.”
Six minutes later Stewart responded to a Rangers fan who said, “Hahaha a month ago you said it was fine because couldn’t prove it.”
Stewart tweeted: “I’m going to reference this once for the people, who were either wilfully misrepresenting what I said or we unable to understand. I never said anything even remotely like this.”
Stewart’s being deliberately facetious here. He might not have used those exact words but we all know he wasn’t exactly bursting out of the traps to defend Kamara’s honour.
He said he was “reprehensive and uneasy” about making a conclusion after the game, so why didn’t he just keep schtum rather than cast more aspersions?
The best thing to do would have been to condemn the actions outright and offer Kamara support but if you’re not going to do that at least keep quiet until due diligence has been carried out.
Stewart surely knew the effects of his words, or lack of words in some cases, would have amongst Rangers fans and the football world in general.
He showed a callous lack of emotion for events and only has himself to blame for people getting on his back now.
We welcome his strong stand on Kudela now, we just wish he had shown that more in the first instance and showed more sympathy to the plight of Kamara.
In other Rangers news, Celtic-crazy Alan Brazil rows with Ally McCoist over Gers ban.