Fights

UEFA has failed to protect players from racist abuse once again.

It’s not that this is anything new, it's just the players are naturally fed up with the monkey chants, the racial diatribes and having things like water bottles and human spit flung at them. UEFA in the past has levied fines and partial stadium closures and recently put in a new protocol allowing teams to walk off the pitch, but is that really enough of a crackdown?

No. Racism in the stands has always been there but now that there’s a spotlight on it, UEFA looks like the joke that it already is.

A video of Juventus’ training session Tuesday has taken social media by storm. The clip features a frustrated Gonzalo Higuain lashing out during a game of rondo (monkey in the middle).

Higuain lost it in training today pic.twitter.com/k6BaXEyS6c

— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) September 17, 2019

Kick It Out, an organization that advocates for players who experience racial abuse within the footballing world, has issued a call to action to social media companies in response to the Twitter abuse that Chelsea striker Tammy Abraham has received over the past 24 hours.

Arsenal has confirmed that the man featured in a video fighting off two attackers with knives in North London is defender Sead Kolašinac and that the man in the car is Mesut Özil.

Kolašinac showed no fear in this failed attack as the video shows him forcing the assailants around the vehicle. For a man who gets paid millions to use his feet, he looked very prepared to use his hands. But, of course, why risk his livelihood with a kick that could’ve probably shattered one of the motorists’ helmets. 

It was the sort of tackle in which the final verdict would be better suited to a courtroom; a straight red card certainly doesn’t seem like enough justice for an act of violence perpetrated with the sole intention of seriously injuring another player.

During yesterday’s “friendly” between Sevilla and Liverpool at Fenway Park in Boston, Sevilla’s Joris Gnagnon was handed his marching orders in the 76th minute for this assault on 18-year-old Liverpool winger Yasser Larouci.

Last night in Belo Horizonte, Brazil defeated Argentina 2-0 to advance to the final of the 2019 Copa América, thus prolonging Lionel Messi’s wait for a crowning glory in international play. 

The match was a real humdinger, featuring a Seleção side frightening in both defense and attack and an Albiceleste unit that didn’t make playing cohesive football look like an impossible task. This was probably the best Argentina’s looked since 2016.

England’s 3-0 defeat of Cameroon in the Women’s World Cup Round of 16 today will live long in the memory for all the wrong reasons. The match threatened to descend into chaos on a number of occasions, and it left the players and managers of both nations fuming, albeit for very different reasons.