Atlético Get Off Light

In what has to be con­sid­ered a poor deci­sion, the UEFA Appeals Body has reduced the ini­tial three-match sta­dium clo­sure to a two-match behind closed doors sen­tence, with one match deferred for two years. Con­se­quently, Atlético must play their next home fix­ture in the Cham­pi­ons League, against PSV Eind­hoven on Wednes­day  Novem­ber 26th, with­out any spec­ta­tors in atten­dance. The ini­tial fine of 150,000 Euros still stands.

Atlético were pun­ished after crowd prob­lems marred their Cham­pi­ons League home match with Olympique Mar­seille on Oct 1, when UEFA said fail­ures in the club’s organ­i­sa­tion of the event led to con­fronta­tions between vis­it­ing fans and Span­ish police. Racist chants were report­edly aimed at the French club’s play­ers, while the Mar­seille team bus was attacked after the match. Atlético were orig­i­nally ordered to play their next two Euro­pean fix­tures at least 300km out­side Madrid.

“Atletico will fight for their inno­cence until the very end. There has been a reduc­tion (in the pun­ish­ment) but we don’t agree with the man­ner in which the process has been con­ducted,” direc­tor Clemente Villaverde told the club’s web­site .

The ban for Atlético coach Javier Aguirre was not reversed, and he will be banned from the side­lines for the games against Liv­er­pool FC away on Tues­day and the visit of PSV three weeks later. Aguirre was sent off in the match against Mar­seille and was told that he will have to sit in the stands for the two matches, but he will travel to UEFA head­quar­ters to appeal the decision.

Accord­ing to Aguirre he did not insult either the ref­eree or any player and said that the ref­eree did not include any­thing in his report about his actions. “They can­not pun­ish me for telling a player not to do some­thing. There was no insult on my part and no phys­i­cal or ver­bal aggres­sion,” he told Span­ish news­pa­per AS.

Videos of the inci­dents between Mar­seille sup­port­ers and the police in the sta­dium can be seen via these YouTube links:

Video 1
Video 2

I think the reduc­tion of this ban sends a very bad mes­sage to the UEFA com­mu­nity. Racism and vio­lence in the stands is tol­er­ated by the orga­niz­ing body. How else can these con­tin­ued weak sanc­tions be viewed ? I’m dis­ap­pointed in the deci­sion and I don’t think UEFA is truly inter­ested in rid­ding the sport of this dis­gust­ing ele­ment once and for all. As impor­tant as stand­ing up for the smaller fed­er­a­tions might be, I hope Michel Pla­tini turns some atten­tion to racism and vio­lence that con­tin­ues to mar the beau­ti­ful game. These sorts of inci­dents have gone on for far too long.

Tagged as: atletico madrid, liverpool, marseille, psv eindhoven, UEFA