Racism has (apparently) reared its ugly head amidst claims made by Blackburn manager Mark Hughes that his South African striker Benni McCarthy was racially abused during Thursday's Uefa Cup tie at Wisla Krakow.
In an incident that overshadowed an otherwise entertaining match, a scuffle broke out between McCarthy and Wisla's Serbian full back Nikola Mijailovic following the final whistle.
"Benni was upset by a number of personal comments directed at him by one of their players," Hughes said on Thursday in Krakow. "It happened right throughout the game."
Hughes has demanded that the governing body of Europe, UEFA, should take strong action against the alleged perpetrator of the abuse.
A punsihment of any sort will be difficult to implement due to there being a lack of evidence to support the allegations. Currently, a "his word against yours" scenario exists and this was re-iterated by UEFA director of communications William Gaillard who stated, "the problem will be finding the hard evidence to pass sanctions."
The incident marred a productive week in UEFA's long battle with eliminating racism from football grounds. Earlier in the week, a number of activities were organised by The Football Against Racism in Europe (FARE) network as a prelude to the group stage matches of the UEFA Champions League. |