FIFA President Sepp Blatter believes closing down stadiums for racist behaviour is “unduly excessive.”

The debate over how to clamp down on racism in football has been raging for many years.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter believes closing down stadiums for racist behaviour is “unduly excessive.”

The debate over how to clamp down on racism in football has been raging for many years.

In Italy stadiums were closed down for the racist chanting of only a few, but appeals from clubs and supporters saw that reduced to shutting only the areas of the stadium where the abuse originated from.

Most controversially, the anti-racism laws have been used to punish fans for ‘territorial discrimination’ – usually insults from northern clubs towards those in the south.

Now Blatter has waded in on the issue in his FIFA Weekly column.

“Games behind closed doors are also included in the code but I regard this penalty as an extremely dubious instrument.

“They represent a disproportionately collective punishment. Furthermore it involves excluding innocent fans of the opposing team.

“In the final analysis matches played behind closed doors penalise football. The punishment is unduly excessive. Instead it is the troublemakers who must be punished. And it is clear to me that the clubs are responsible for the hooligans.

“To my mind there remains only one solution to the problem: sporting sanctions are the only effective punishment. It has to cause the clubs real hurt otherwise nothing will change.”

Serie A sides would raise the point that ultras have acted out in order to purposefully get their club fined or protest against the rule.

When the first bans were imposed for anti-Neapolitan chants, several other sets of fans joined in with the same insults – even when not playing against Napoli – in a show of solidarity.

Meanwhile, Lazio ultras have boycotted the club’s games and urged their fans not to buy any official merchandise in order to ‘punish’ President Claudio Lotito.

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