Liverpool football pundit speaks on racism

Noam Tommsky

What with the current accusations against John Terry and the ongoing Suárez/Evra imbroglio, the issue du jour in football seems to be racism – not the usual mindless terrace racism, but player-on-player racism – and so it fell to Jeff Stelling, the eminently sensible chair of Sky Soccer Saturday, to ask the show’s assembled quartet of heavy-hitting moral philosophers to debate it. After Le Tiss and Merse had duly pronounced, the ever-eloquent Tommo was invited by Stelling to ponder on what might happen to the accusers if the allegations cannot be proven (not are proven to be false, which is another thing). Here is the Liverpudlian pundit’s considered response:

I think it’s extremely difficult, Jeff. The racism card and everything that gets brought about… and it, it seems strange: once one starts, everybody else is very much, sort of, brings everything into the spotlight, yet again. And it should be put away but we know it will always come back out and everything. But it’s difficult. These allegations that get brought: we have investigations, everyone has to go through with it, and then it gets – I think I remember, quite a few years ago, with Stan Collymore and Steve Harkness and what have you, and nothing was proven. It was extremely difficult and it just goes away. If that happens, I would think that that would happen again, it would get done, because people’ll say ‘What happens with Evra?’ and ‘What happens with Anton Ferdinand?’. It’s extremely difficult where you go with it, but I’m with the guys over the John Terry thing: I think it would be extremely difficult for him to play for England again.

Er, quite. Next week, Tommo will discuss the impact of the global financial crisis on football. Maybe.