Evra accuses Suarez of racism

[JHP]

An excellent article. It's telling that it's from an Irish paper. Our great investigative journalists strangely seem incapable of similar objectivity.

[Vermilion]

An excellent article. It's telling that it's from an Irish paper. Our great investigative journalists strangely seem incapable of similar objectivity.

[Norbs]

An excellent article. It's telling that it's from an Irish paper. Our great investigative journalists strangely seem incapable of similar objectivity.

The comparisons between the way Terry and Suarez are being, or have been, dealt with are depressing

[Suarez]

When is a remark racist? When spoken by a foreigner

The fight against racism in football has not been helped by the savaging of Suarez, Dalglish and Liverpool, writes DAVID ADAMS

‘IS CALLING someone a ‘black c***’ racist? Spoke to a black player today who said racism is words like c**n, n-word, w**, etc. Don’t know.” This crass query was posted on Twitter less than two months ago. It refers to what the England and Chelsea football captain, John Terry, has admitted calling QPR’s Anton Ferdinand during a premiership game last October.

Terry will appear in court next month, charged with a racially motivated public order offence. He insists that his remarks were taken out of context, and must be presumed innocent until proven otherwise. The tweeter, however, appears to suggest that Terry’s outburst might not be racist at all, regardless of context.

Worryingly, the tweet was posted by the chief sports writer of the Daily Mirror, Oliver Holt (who has authored two books on Terry, under the pen names, Ollie and Oliver Derbyshire). Strange that a journalist, of all people, is not entirely clear on what constitutes racism. Stranger still that Holt and his newspaper, along with most of the rest of the British media, have of late been adopting what they imagine to be a high-minded, zero-tolerance approach to this issue.

They have been relentless in condemning Liverpool’s Uruguayan player, Luis Suarez, after he was found guilty by the English FA of “racially abusing” the Manchester United footballer Patrice Evra, by referring to him as “negro”. Aside from the fact that Evra’s South American team mates at Manchester United also call him Negro, I would have thought this word to be far less offensive than what Terry has admitted shouting at Ferdinand.

Increasingly, the media has also been savaging Liverpool and its manager, Kenny Dalglish, for continuing to insist that Suarez is innocent. Oliver Holt went so far as to suggest in a column last Saturday that their support for Suarez makes Dalglish and Liverpool partially culpable for a racist insult directed at a young Oldham player at Anfield the previous night.

Self-evidently, Holt et al believe that Suarez and Liverpool have no right to question an FA ruling. This is another strange position for journalists to adopt. They, of all people, should realise that even a proper court can get it wrong, never mind the FA’s “kangaroo court”, as Everton manager David Moyes recently described it. The FA secures a conviction rate of 99.5 per cent, as Irish sports lawyer (and Liverpool fan) Stuart Gilhooley has pointed out.

An unnamed sports lawyer has told the BBC that the FA acts as “police, judge and jury all rolled into one”. No wonder Suarez, his club and its supporters are up in arms.

Undeterred, the British media is presenting the FA’s handling of the Suarez affair as a shining example of best practice, while doing all it can to shift attention away from the finer details and on to the broader issue of racism. This involves making pantomime villains of Suarez, Dalglish and Liverpool.

In truth, even before the case was heard, the bulk of the media had made plain its position. Suarez was never afforded the same innocent-until-proven-guilty treatment that John Terry has (rightly) enjoyed.

From the moment Evra’s complaint emerged, hardly a day passed without it being highlighted. Yet within days of John Terry being charged, sportswriters and football commentators were commending the Chelsea captain for a “courageous performance”, “despite the pressures he is playing under”.

Suarez was fined €48,500 and banned for eight games by the FA. Somewhat conveniently, Terry was reported to the police by “a member of the public” and shuffled off to a criminal court where the evidential threshold for conviction is massively higher than that of the FA, and the maximum possible penalty decidedly lower (€2,500).

I am not a disinterested observer, having supported Liverpool for more than 40 years. But then, who is? (Lord) Herman Ouseley and Piara Powar, two of the most vocal and widely quoted critics of Suarez, Dalglish and Liverpool, and strident supporters of the FA’s ruling, are both invariably described by the media only as anti-racism campaigners. That the first is also a member of the FA and on the board of the Manchester United Foundation (Evra’s club), and the second is a director of the Chelsea Foundation (Terry’s club), is never mentioned.

Why has a basic tenet of good journalistic practice, highlighting possible conflicts of interest, been dispensed with? Ultimately, the FA has scored some imaginary political point against Fifa’s Sepp Blatter; anti-racism campaigners have had their (extremely important) issue raised to stratospheric heights; and the British media has been able to flaunt its supposed anti-racist credentials. That the reputation of a “Johnny Foreigner” has been destroyed in the process, and a great football club and its manager tarnished, is unfortunate. But at least it wasn’t an England captain.


Source: The Irish Times

Is calling someone a black c*nt racist? easy to find the answer ollie, just ask the oldham player what he thinks... No your mate Terry will not get away with this.

[Shaggy]

Poor ickle Ollie is upset!

OllieHoltMirror Oliver Holt
Shame some Suarez apologists still trying to inflame the situation. We've witnessed the dangers that can bring in the last few days

OllieHoltMirror Oliver Holt
That includes the LFC fan in the Irish Times so desperate to exonerate Suarez he's attributing books to me that I haven't written

OllieHoltMirror Oliver Holt
Have to say, that is pretty amusing. Some people get quotes falsely attributed. I get an entire book. Doesn't s

[Assassin]

Plenty good enough for the sensationalist ****!!!

[Reece]

So is he denying writing Terry's book(s), or have I read that wrong?

[Vermilion]

Poor ickle Ollie is upset!

OllieHoltMirror Oliver Holt
Shame some Suarez apologists still trying to inflame the situation. We've witnessed the dangers that can bring in the last few days

OllieHoltMirror Oliver Holt
That includes the LFC fan in the Irish Times so desperate to exonerate Suarez he's attributing books to me that I haven't written

OllieHoltMirror Oliver Holt
Have to say, that is pretty amusing. Some people get quotes falsely attributed. I get an entire book. Doesn't s

Someone should tweet him back and say, better to have a book wrongly attributed, than the title..'Racist', EH!

The ****.

[JHP]

An excellent article. It's telling that it's from an Irish paper. Our great investigative journalists strangely seem incapable of similar objectivity.

Maybe I was a bit too hasty. This is decent http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/f...s-6288214.html

[Icon]

This might go on for a bit - hope Evra gets ****ing tangled up...

[Jack D Rips]

Ollie needs to change his wiki page. It seems to suggest that he was ghost writer on two JT books using the pen name Oliver or Ollie Derbyshire. ( did you know his mum is Eileen Derbyshire, better known as Emily Bishop)

[Vermilion]

Ollie needs to change his wiki page. It seems to suggest that he was ghost writer on two JT books using the pen name Oliver or Ollie Derbyshire. ( did you know his mum is Eileen Derbyshire, better known as Emily Bishop)

Yes. Don't know about everyone else though.

[fah-q]

Yes. Don't know about everyone else though.

No, she's not my mum.

[ChesterDave]

Ollie needs to change his wiki page.

Should probably change his face while he is at it. Something less smug and punchable should do the trick

[Craig_H]

Did Suarez really say 'negro' seven times?

Ian Herbert
Thursday 12 January 2012

The Football Association's Independent Regulatory Commission report on Luis Suarez was the most detailed of its kind, yet the unsparing detail of its 115 pages has left an unresolved and slightly unsettling issue. It is the hugely significant question of how many times the Liverpool player really did direct the word "negro" or "negros" at Manchester United's Patrice Evra at Anfield.

Suarez admits using it once – and would have been well advised to apologise immediately for that – though the conclusion open to question is that Evra must have been right when he said he heard it seven times because, in the three-man commission's view, he was a more reliable witness than Suarez.

This point is central to a paper on the findings of the regulatory commission, by the lawyer Daniel Geey, which has been published by the respected Liverpool website, The Tomkins Times. Geey's Liverpool affiliations will perhaps be seized upon by those of a United disposition, though he argues persuasively that if Evra did hear the offending word seven times then the fact ought to have surfaced from one of nine contemporaneous witnesses at Anfield on 15 October, who only appeared to have heard the Frenchman complain about being abused on one occasion. The figure seven was established from adding up the claims Evra made in total, in subsequent interviews

Close analysis of the commission's 115-page report shows that Evra's first allegation of the abuse came when he said to referee Andre Marriner, on the pitch: "Ref, he just called me a ****ing black." The commission report revealed that Evra next told Ryan Giggs that "he called me black" (once again, no reference to the number of times). After the game the defender spoke to Antonia Valencia, Javier Hernandez, Nani and Anderson who, in their witness statements, made no mention of multiple use. The players made the claim that Suarez "would not talk to Evra because he was black".

Sir Alex Ferguson's initial statement also alluded to a single reference and though Liverpool's administration manager, Ray Haughan, claimed he heard Ferguson say the word had been used "five times", the commission report noted that the United manager "did not recall having said specifically that it was five times. Mr Evra did not mention... any specific number that he told Sir Alex at the time".

It was only in a post-match interview with French television station Canal+ that Evra said the word had been used 10 times, though he later retracted this as a statement of fact, suggesting instead that "'10 times' was just a figure of speech in France". This means that the first time Evra claimed and actually set out that he was abused multiple times by Suarez was at the earliest on 20 October – four days after the match – in his first FA interview.

The commission's conclusions on Evra's "10 times" claim are also puzzling. The commission report says Liverpool's French director of football, Damien Comolli, had agreed with Evra's claim that it was a figure of speech. Yet Comolli actually said in his witness evidence that "nobody in the French language will say [10 times as a figure of speech]". Geey asks whether the testimonies of Liverpool's Spanish-speaking players – Lucas, Maxi Rodriguez and Sebastian Coates – might not have been useful in clarifying precisely what Suarez said.

Geey's argument is not that the commission came to the wrong decision in interpreting that Suarez used an abusive term in contravention of FA Rule E3(1). Rather, it is that the inconsistencies should have led it to question the credibility of Evra's evidence – and ask whether Suarez really used the offending term more than once. Liverpool might, at the very least, have appealed the number of Suarez's alleged offences, Geey believes. Such an appeal, if successful, might have reduced both Suarez's penalty and the enduring damage to his reputation. Instead, the history books will always decree that Suarez used the word "negro" seven times.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/did-suarez-really-say-negro-seven-times-6288214.html