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Sunday, February 23, 2025

FIFA, Concacaf to act on death threats, racism to T&T players

by

Walter Alibey
1322 days ago
20210713
A Mexico fan tries to calm down the crowd, which was threatened with a suspended game as Mexico played to a 0-0 draw against Trinidad and Tobago, during the second half of a CONCACAF Gold Cup Group A soccer match in Arlington, Texas,USA on Saturday. (AP Photo/Michael Ainsworth)

A Mexico fan tries to calm down the crowd, which was threatened with a suspended game as Mexico played to a 0-0 draw against Trinidad and Tobago, during the second half of a CONCACAF Gold Cup Group A soccer match in Arlington, Texas,USA on Saturday. (AP Photo/Michael Ainsworth)

Michael Ainsworth

Foot­ball's world gov­ern­ing body FI­FA and the Con­fed­er­a­tion of North, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion Foot­ball (CON­CA­CAF), are set to deal with is­sues of death threats, racism and at­tempts to phys­i­cal­ly harm di­rect­ed to mem­bers of the T&T foot­ball team at the on­go­ing CON­CA­CAF Gold Cup in the Unit­ed States.

An­gry Mex­i­can fans hurled racial slurs and threw bot­tles at the T&T play­ers dur­ing a Group A en­counter be­tween T&T and Mex­i­co at the AT&T Sta­di­um in Ar­ling­ton, Texas, USA on Sat­ur­day. This sit­u­a­tion was fur­ther ex­ac­er­bat­ed by a clash be­tween Mex­i­can winger Hirv­ing 'Chucky' Lozano, goal­keep­er Mar­vin Phillip and de­fend­er Alvin Jones at the end of the first half which re­sult­ed in Lozano be­ing rushed to the hos­pi­tal with a sus­pect­ed in­jury to the head.

The game end­ed in a goal­less draw as coach An­gus Eve em­ployed a counter-at­tack­ing strat­e­gy that, not on­ly frus­trat­ed the tour­na­ment's de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons, but pre­vent­ed them from scor­ing.

Eve, yes­ter­day con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia Sports that be­cause of death threats to him and his play­ers- Phillip and Jones, there has been height­ened po­lice pres­ence at the ho­tel where the team is cur­rent­ly based.

The T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion has since re­act­ed to this de­vel­op­ment by writ­ing to both FI­FA and the CON­CA­CAF and has since re­ceived a promise that some­thing will be done about it soon, the coach said.

Eve, a for­mer na­tion­al play­er, did not have this ex­pe­ri­ence dur­ing his five years of play­ing for T&T at the Gold Cup, and in re­liv­ing the hor­ri­fy­ing ex­pe­ri­ence said they were out­num­bered in terms of sup­port at the sta­di­um. How­ev­er, the Mex­i­can fans be­came very an­gry when their team could not score, so they start­ed chant­i­ng racial slurs, throw­ing bot­tles at the play­ers on the touch­line and even shout­ed death threats.

"I must ad­mit that I felt a bit bad for my play­ers, and though there would nor­mal­ly be a po­lice pres­ence at our ho­tel, there was a height­ened pres­ence be­cause of the death threats," Eve ex­plained.

Eve in the post-match in­ter­view said the match was stopped three times be­cause of the crowd's be­hav­iour, not­ing: "At the third time I felt the ref­er­ee should have stopped the match and award­ed it to us be­cause we have to stamp out this type of be­hav­iour in the game."

To date, the T&TFA foot­ball page has been lit­tered with threats and abuse from Mex­i­can fans, with many al­so di­rect­ed to Jones and Phillip. Phillip has since apol­o­gised to Lozano, say­ing there was def­i­nite­ly no in­ten­tion to cause harm and lat­er wished the Mex­i­can play­er a speedy re­cov­ery.

On Sun­day, Guardian Me­dia Sports got a glimpse of some of the things that were said on the TTFA foot­ball page. Among the com­ments were: " Y'all some of the nas­ti­est peo­ple I've ever seen play soc­cer. Y'all just go against Mex­i­co to try and in­jure them. We're start­ing a pe­ti­tion to lick y'all out of the Gold Cup. Y'all aren't worth it"; "y'all some hoes for what cha did to Chucky Lozano"; "You will pay for Chucky Lozano you mon­keys,".

On Mon­day, the pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee Bri­an Lewis, said he was an­gry when he heard about it ini­tial­ly.

Lewis, who is al­so chair­man of the Sport In­tegri­ty Glob­al Al­liance's (SIGA) stand­ing com­mit­tee on race, gen­der, di­ver­si­ty, and in­clu­sion, said: "What I was told it was trolling, but ob­vi­ous­ly it was racist, out­right racism, the term used, the 'N' word, mon­keys.

We can't hide from it, the fact that it is some­thing that I have raised on more than one oc­ca­sion, about the is­sue of racism in glob­al sport. In April the T&TOC joined a boy­cott of so­cial me­dia for a week­end in protest of racism, racial ac­tiv­i­ties tak­ing place on so­cial me­dia. So I was ini­tial­ly an­gry be­cause even though you're aware of it when it hap­pens in an open way, it is trig­ger­ing."

Mean­while, a news re­lease from the TTFA on Mon­day states: "The Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion strong­ly con­demns the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry ac­tions, racist com­ments and threat­en­ing mes­sages di­rect­ed at our play­ers, staff, sup­port­ers and coun­try fol­low­ing the Se­nior Men's Na­tion­al Team 0-0 re­sult ver­sus Mex­i­co on 10th Ju­ly 2021. Dis­crim­i­na­tion and racism have no part in our game and our so­ci­ety. Of­fi­cial re­ports have been lodged with CON­CA­CAF and we are work­ing with them to en­sure that the safe­ty and well­be­ing of the team is main­tained. These ac­tions are root­ed in di­vi­sion, so it is para­mount that we unite to stamp them out. The Fight Back is Against Racism and Dis­crim­i­na­tion."


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