Soccer / Racism and hooliganism tackled at TA conference

Soccer teams must take responsibility and battle violence among their fans, David Davies, executive director of the English Football Association, said yesterday at a conference in Tel Aviv about the explosive issue, a day after a street fight erupted following a Premier League match between Maccabi Haifa and Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Davies said that a far-reaching campaign, begun in 1993, had drastically reduced "the poison of racism" in English soccer stadia, but there is still a way to go before the problem is eliminated.

"Certainly the instances of racism and hooliganism inside stadia have declined in the past decade," he told a conference on racism in soccer sponsored by the Israel Football Association, the British Council and the New Israel Fund.

Davies came to Israel with former England stars Brendon Batson and Gary Mabbut, to try to help Israeli soccer cope with its own problems of violence and racism, which have been growing in recent years.

Rifat Turk, an Israeli Arab who played for the Israeli national team in the 1980s, said the problem of racism is endemic to Israeli soccer. "Today there is no game where they don't curse Arabs, even if there aren't any on the field," he said. "People yell `Death to the Arabs' like its going out of style."

Batson, a native of Grenada who said he encountered racism while playing for English side West Bromwich Albion in the 1970s, said the teams themselves must take the lead in improving the atmosphere.

"If clubs can recognize the issue for what it is, this is the first step in getting the problem right," he said.

Former Tottenham Hotspur star Mabbut, who has become a leading advocate in the battle against racism at soccer grounds, said that it was essential for players to be involved in fighting the phenomenon.

"Some players are afraid to speak out against fans who behave offensively because they worry for their status at their club," but they need to think about tomorrow about the future of their society and about their own personal future. They must speak out against racism." Mabbut said.

Speakers at the event, which as well as the British soccer personalities, included former police chief Shlomo Aharonishki, MK Avshalom Vilan, the chairman of the Knesset committee on violence in sport, Maccabi Haifa players Giovanni Rosso and Walid Badir and Betar Jerusalem's Lior Assoulin called for a zero tolerance policy toward violence and racism.