Lega Serie A president Luigi De Siervo revealed the plan to introduce facial recognition systems at all topflight clubs in order to combat racism in football.
The league have been forced to come up with a response after Milan goalkeeper Mike Maignan was racially abused in the first half of the match away to Udinese on the weekend. He briefly left the pitch and later penned a latter calling on the ‘entire system to take responsibility’.
Maignan received widespread support from the footballing world and the incident again sparked the conversation regarding the insufficient measures to combat racism in football, prompting the authorities in Italy to start looking for solutions.
Speaking to Corriere della Sera via Calciomercato.com, De Siervo discussed Serie A’s plans to try and fight racism in football.
“The plan is to equip the stadiums of all the teams registered in Serie A with video surveillance systems capable of scanning the faces of those entering the stadium at the entrance, linking them with the personal data present in the tickets, so as to immediately trace to the identity of fans.
“Despite the economic crisis resulting from COVID, the lack of willingness of the players to even partially reduce their salaries, I hope that we will be able to invest in this technology. The costs are significant, but the hope is to be able to approve the project by the end of this season.”
Racism has continued to be a problem in Italian football in recent years and both Lega Serie A and the FIGC have been heavily criticised for their generally poor and insufficient responses.
Caso #Maignan, #DeSiervo: ‘Entro fine stagione scanner facciali negli stadi’ https://t.co/m2N5BFGRCp
— calciomercato.com (@cmdotcom) January 23, 2024