Racism has no place anywhere, especially in soccer....

[too young to retire yet...]

Not sure if this is the right place for this post, but it needs to be published. Today in the Ultra Soccer League our team played against the Vancouver Wolves. #2 on the team let go of a bunch of juvenile, disparaging and racist remarks, among other things calling our keeper, who is Mexican a 'spic'. Terrible that there are people like this, let alone guys who play soccer with this type of attitude. I feel sorry for you, #2, as you are clearly misguided, immature and have a very poor understanding of what Canada is about. We are a multicultural society, as is your team, and you should wake up to that fact and give your head a shake.

A pissed off TTPer...

[bravedart]

It is sad that this continues to take place.

I was witness to a significant amount of this with a youth league I was involved with...yes we are talking about youth players and 14 and 15 year old boys but it is shocking the level degradation many resort to.

As bad as this level of behaviour is I think I am more shocked that the players who are initiating the racial slurring have teammates who they are offending also (and they refer to them as friends)...how can people play with such idiots?

It does happen the other way too...our Indo ref's caught a few of the indo kids throwing racial slurs in punjabi...

My opinion is that anyone caught in this act should receive an automatic red and serious suspension.

[Yoda]

Doubt a ref will ever hand out a red but coach's should take a hard line and bench/suspend players for that kind of behaviour.

[too young to retire yet...]

One of the more senior players on the sideline said he would chat to the lad, but he seemed to be a pretty troubled guy, so i doubt it will have much effect...

[Kevin Hector]

last year we had a team call us a bunch of white boys. man I was pissed. how dare they!!!

[girth]

Their's two things that I cannot stand and will not tolerate...racism and white people.

I can only get away with that as yes I am white.

Honestly though if comments are made on the field and the ref won't deal with it with a red card then the coach should yank the loser off the field.

[Captain Shamrock]

Referee's would send a player off......wouldn't they? Possibly Foul and Abusive language? If not, then the referee should definitely ask the coach to remove the bastard who said it.....and let the coach know what was said.....

[Reccos]

I haven't seen much of this in soccer at a senior level but heard a lot of this when I was coaching youth soccer and a team in Burnaby that was definitely UN material - 3 East Indians; two blacks one from Africa, one from Trinidad; a guy from El Salvador - little English, 3 East Indians and I forget the rest. We had picked up some Cliff Avenue guys (tough white guys) and with this mix we played our first tournament with these Div 1 guys and that first game was nasty out in Chilliwhack. We won the Vancouver and District Div 1 title that year. But in the first game these new Cliff Avenue guys were looking to settle scores and at the half Peter Sarai, the captain, made it clear that we were going to get that shite all year so let's just ignore it and play which was tough for some of those toughies but they realized our goal was to win games.

Years later coaching men, one of our guys made a shocking comment to a first nations guy who had just kicked him for the umpteenth time. I took the guy out and at the half he apologized to the team and later to the person he said it to. Our guys dumped on him for that but his embarrassment and his own team mates reaction was penalty enough and the ref let it go for a yellow I think.

It is not part of the game and shouldn't be.

In pro football they trash talk all the time - esp DBs and receivers but it doesn't get to racist stuff. No one needs that stuff much like in football taking penalties is not tolerated nor is fighting.

[too young to retire yet...]

Unfortunately, the ref didn't hear the remarks as it was away from the play, as these kinds of things usually are, as they are cowardly and #2 would never have the capacity to back his comments up. Also, I doubt the referees in this summer league would ever wade into these types of situations, as they prefer to duck and hide and ignore what really goes on. Hopefully the player on the sidelines did what he said he would and spoke to the player and let him know that this is totally unacceptable, no matter what the situation (what actually sparked him was our player returned a remark that he was outpaced to the ball after #2 trashed talked another of our players that he was slow). Trash talk is an accepted part of the game and all players should learn how to deal with it for what it is, without getting into sad displays of ignorance such as racist remarks...