Calacus Weekly Hit & Miss – The England team & Iceland FA
Every week we look at the best and worst communicators in the sports world from the previous week.
HIT - THE ENGLAND TEAM
We’ve spoken before about fans booing their own players who take the knee before football matches, so it came as no surprise that England players would subject to abuse in Budapest when they played Hungary in a World Cup qualifier.
Hungary's President, Viktor Orban, has attracted controversy in the past over his comments about immigration, describing Muslim migrants as "invaders" and created a culture where racism is condemned as it should be.
The national team had already been ordered to play their next three home UEFA competition matches behind closed doors because of “discriminatory behaviour” by their supporters at Euro 2020.
To their credit, Hungary’s players pointed to the ‘Respect’ badges on their sleeves after home supporters ignored requests not to jeer before kick-off.
In a hostile atmosphere at the Puskas Arena in Budapest, Raheem Sterling, Jude Bellingham and others were subjected to monkey chants during the game with missiles and a flare also thrown on to the pitch.
When Sterling scored the opening England goal early in the second half in front of Hungary’s ultras - known as the Carpathian Brigade - cups and abuse rained down on him.
Sterling has spoken in the past about the importance of addressing abuse in football, in particular in football stadia, but dealt with the home fans’ reaction with dignity.
In fact, Sterling accepted a yellow card for raising his short to pay tribute to a childhood friend, with a message on his vest which read ‘Love You Forever Steffie Gregg,’ who died aged just 26 recently.
Anyone who has been subjected to racist abuse will tell you that it doesn’t get any easier with time.
It is to Sterling’s credit that he had the presence of mind to remember his tribute and maintain a smile in the face of such aggression.
Sterling is a symbol of dignity in the face of personal abuse, refusing to give the impression that the abusers will win, his head down, focusing on his football.
Bellingham still just a teenager, called for action when he tweeted thanks for the support he had received: “Part of the game and always will be until proper punishments are put in place by those with the power. We can’t let hate win, keep smiling!”
For his part, England manager Gareth Southgate condemned the racism and said: “There’s no more this group of players or staff can do in the fight against racism. Other people have got to take the right action to try and make progress.
“Our players can’t do anything more than they have done in the past two or three years in trying to get the right messages out, take the right stands, and it’s for other people to protect them. It’s for me to protect them in the main, but for the authorities to protect them as well.
“They shouldn’t have to be subjected to any form of racism. There’s a balance in the crowd. As we know at home not everybody causes problems.
“It’s not fair to criticise all the Hungarian fans. A lot were very generous and behaved extremely well. The individuals that are responsible need to be dealt with. I think there’s some evidence that people have been filmed and we’ve got to hope the authorities deal with that in the right way.”
The Football Association also asked made a statement which said: “It is extremely disappointing to hear reports of discriminatory actions towards some of our England players. We will be asking FIFA to investigate the matter. We continue to support the players and staff in our collective determination to highlight and tackle discrimination in all its forms.”
The Hungarian FA made its own statement, although given its recent track record, clearly more needs to be done to address the racist behaviour of its fans.
They said: "The vast majority of the sixty thousand fans who visited Puskas Arena cheered for their team in a fair way and encouraged the Hungarian national team even when they were already losing.
"We need to identify the troublemakers and strictly punish them in order to protect these fans. The fans who threw flares and glasses to the pitch are being identified.
"The Hungarian Football Federation will report/has already reported them to the police. The Federation will initiate a civilian lawsuit in order to make the perpetrators responsible for paying any fine that could occur, and, besides that, they can expect a two-year ban at the end of the process.”
FIFA also opened an investigation and said: “First and foremost, FIFA strongly rejects any form of racism and violence and has a very clear zero-tolerance stance for such behaviour in football. FIFA will take adequate actions as soon as it receives match reports concerning yesterday’s Hungary-England game.”
Questions remain whether the UEFA ban should have been extended by FIFA or whether the Hungarian football authorities could have done more to pre-empt the likely abuse from sections of their fans.
MISS – ICELAND FA
As we have always said, it is how you deal with a crisis rather than a crisis itself that defines how damaging the situation is to your long-term reputation.
The key to crisis management is to acknowledge and address the specific situation and then put in place systems and processes which will help prevent similar problems occurring again in future.
So it was no surprise that the entire Iceland Football Association Board had to resign recently when it became clear that they had failed to take complaints against an international player seriously.
The feelgood factor that has seen Iceland punch far above its weight to reach major international football finals has been shattered, with even Iceland’s Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir urging decisive action and stand against all forms of sexual harassment. “A grassroots re-evaluation is needed of how the movement deals with these sorts of cases,” she said.
To compound matters, the Iceland FA President, the former Tottenham Hotspur defender Gudni Bergsson, claimed initially that the organisation's leaders were not aware of any allegations of sexual assault made against any players on the national team. This later turned out to be untrue.
In early August , Hanna Björg Vilhjálmsdóttir wrote an article which demanded an end to the wall of silence surrounding Icelandic footballers involved in sexual assaults and domestic violence.
The Icelandic FA responded by stating that they dealt with all incidents of violence through appropriate channels and denied the accusation of silencing. This was while Bergsson declared in an interview with RÚV that they had received no official notifications.
In an interview with RÚV, Þórhildur Gyða Arnarsdóttir revealed that in 2017, she was sexually and physically assaulted by a member of the Icelandic national team, which she reported to the police.
Six months later, her father noticed that the accused man was representing Iceland and contacted Bergsson, who dropped the player from the national squad.
Following this contact, Þórhildur claims she was offered a pay-off in return for her silence by the Football Association’s lawyers, which they later said had not been authorised to do so.
The accused player who had assaulted her then confessed to his actions and paid her damages. He issued a statement in which he said: “I did not recognise having harassed them, nor did I recognise having resorted to violence and I declined any guilt. My behaviour was, however, not exemplary, for which I apologised.
“I regretted that, accepted responsibility and offered to settle the incident between us. Arnardottir and her friend demanded an apology and a payment. I accepted their demands and additionally paid ISK3m (£17,200) to the non-governmental organisation Stígamót in recognition of their important work on behalf of survivors of sexual violence.
“This concluded the incident. The KSI was informed of the proceedings and the conclusion of the matter but the association’s denial in Icelandic media recently has led to Arnardottir feeling she was being robbed of her closure by the association. I can understand that.”
Bergsson later admitted his error in saying that there had been no reports made, claiming that he misremembered the incident - and following internal meetings, he announced his resignation.
Two players were then dropped from the Iceland World Cup qualifying squad as the entire Board joined Bergsson in resigning.
The Board then issued a statement, belatedly, admitting their errors.
It said: “Dear victims. We, the board of the Icelandic Football Association believe you and apologise wholeheartedly. We know that we as the parties responsible have let you down and we intend to do better.
“The board has met over the past few days concerning the serious allegations that have been brought against the association recently on silencing sexual assault cases. We take the matter very seriously. Right now, we will start to work with outside professionals on reviewing all responses to sexual assault and violence within the association and how we have and will support victims.
“Additionally, we would like to ask victims or others who have information on serious violence within the association to come forward. We want the cases to be handled appropriately and we want to ensure that the responsibility of the violence will be placed on the shoulders of perpetrators, not victims.
“We intend to fix things that have been broken and inspect the culture that exists within the football movement from the ground up in order to make sure everyone working within the industry experiences welfare and safety, while listening to victims and taking their interests into consideration.
“On account of the statement the board issued on August 17 in response to accusations of violence on behalf of the men’s national team, it should be noted that the statement was based on the limited information the board had at the time, lacking data and further information that have later come to light.
“We apologise to Hanna Björg Vilhjálmsdóttir and others who stood at the front lines pointing out the violence within the Icelandic Football Association for the statement which belittled their accusations and assumed no responsibility nor sincerity.
“This great wave that has been crashing for the past weeks has touched us all. A part of the largest volunteer movement in Iceland, what KSÍ does and says, matters. We have never been as aware of that as we are now and will seek the help of the community to make radical changes, support victims and be a part of the solution. This project will take time but we will begin right away.
“The football movement is part of the community and we as a community all need to do better to support victims and fight sexual violence.”
Protests later took place outside the national stadium while a pink elephant banner was also on show, symbolising a stand against all forms of sexual abuse that depicts the elephant in the room where assaults are known about but not confronted.
For his part, Iceland coach Arnar Vidarsson has seen his side struggle to qualify for the Qatar 2022 World Cup and on the eve of the defeat to Romania he said: “The players cannot be 100 per cent focused on the match. I can’t even ask them that. No team in history has experienced such pressure. It is very difficult for these players, who did nothing wrong. Involuntarily, some players are suspected of something they did not do.”
In the grand scheme of things, that is a secondary issue and while the Board’s statement was strong and addressed all the concerns that have been levelled at the Association, the mass resignations only serve to highlight the institutional shortcomings that should never have happened in the first place.