In my previous column concerning Liverpool Football Club, I mentioned some of more despicable actions either the club or their supporters have involved. Little did I know, there was yet another problem coming out of that club – and once again the issue of racial abuse has reared its ugly head although this incident originated with one of their supporters this time around. The incident occurred late in the second half of the F.A. Cup 3rd Round tie between Liverpool FC, the home team, and a local rival within the Merseyside Oldham Athletic Football Club, which is playing at Football League One in English football. While the victory was essentially in Liverpool’s hand, a 20-year-old footballer who played for Oldham Athletics as a on-loan player from Norwich Football Club named Tom Adeyemi overheard something shouted from the Kop and offended him. Within hours, the Merseyside Police arrested a man from Aintree on the charge on suspicion of racially aggravated public order offense – though he was later released on bail pending further investigation. The following day, Liverpool FC made a statement of apology:
”Whatever the outcome of what is now a police investigation, all of us are deeply sorry for what happened on Friday night and our players and our club pass on our sincere regrets to Tom Adeyemi for the upset and distress he suffered as a result of the matter at hand.
“Our supporters are renowned throughout the world for their outstanding commitment, passion and fairness. The actions of any one individual do not represent our fans. We have a very clearly stated public stance on discrimination and intolerance with dedicated staff that work hard daily on programs in this important area.
“Regarding the incident that occurred on Friday evening, we have given Merseyside police every possible assistance we can and will continue to provide the necessary support to their investigation in order to ensure this particular incident is dealt with properly. We will continue to take the strongest possible action(s) against unacceptable behaviour during our matches.”
What I found in this apology was something that they neglected to mention the similar issues involving Luis Suarez, in which they insisted that Luis Suarez did nothing wrong while using “negro” multiple times directed at Patrice Evra, the French defender who plays for Manchester United and is black, around the time of the announcement of the 8-match suspension, there was another case involving racial issue reaching its verdict in the courtroom. Liverpool, in my views, became quite hypocritical with regards to racial tension by not apologizing for their player’s racial abuse while doing the total opposite when a fan did the same, thus attempting to create a “double standard” towards racism. The true definition of racism is defined as follows: acts as a justification for non-equal treatment (which some regard as “discrimination”) of members of that race – regardless of whomever involves in such acts, and the time table of racism is an on-going basis, rather than one-and-done. Unfortunately, groups like Shades of Shankley and others, they don’t see the issue the same way, and consequently actions like what I have listed from these two articles keep happening, eventually this issue has forced Adidas to drop them from shirts supplies sponsorship after 2012/13 season.
If that wasn’t the worst problem the club is facing, the club has also been suffering from players who behaved badly away off-field. Players like Stewart Downing, who was arrested for suspicion of assault on 1/8/2012; Andy Carroll has long been rumored with his drinking issues, which something that Kenny Dalglish kept defending the type of drinking culture that essentially lead to the death of George Best, whose death was contributed to doing too much binge-drinking in his youth and eventually the liver couldn’t take in those toxins anymore; and lastly, there was an assault case involved with the club’s captain Steven Gerrard in 2008 along with 2 of his friends in Southport, located north/northwest of Liverpool, even though Gerrard was later found not guilty of the charge, his reputation was damaged quite a bit as he hanged around with his friends who did the actual assault on a disc jockey with cuts of the foreheads and broken tooth.
With all that said, I sum up by saying the following conclusion with regards to all of these incidents. Please do me a huge favor by thinking of the consequences before anyone decides to rampage on the establishment, and not go finger-pointing towards everyone else, because each of us MUST be responsible for everything we do at the end.
I have my fun talking about it, now have your say, but keep it civil, not trolling.