Lyle Taylor: Black players must take direct action against racism

Target: Lyle Taylor has been the target of racist abuse twice in recent weeks
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Giuseppe Muro5 April 2019

Angry at the rise of racist incidents and football’s failure to tackle them, Lyle Taylor says it is time for black players to take direct action.

The racist abuse suffered by Juventus teenager Moise Kean at Cagliari on Tuesday and the response of his team-mate Leonardo Bonucci was the final straw for Taylor.

Charlton striker Taylor himself received racist abuse online last weekend. It was the second time this year he had been subjected to abuse, following an incident in February.

If football cannot get its house in order to tackle the spate of recent attacks, then Taylor says players must stop playing if they are racially abused and walk off the pitch. That image and the message it sends, he feels, is the only thing that will make anything change.

“As an industry we need to get our heads out of our backsides,” says Taylor. “You cannot keep hiding away. It is happening. I can understand why fans abuse opposition players but monkey noises? It is flabbergasting people think they can do that.

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“The fact I have been racially abused twice in quick succession says it all. It is becoming every other week. We need to make a stand. There is no way any player deserves having monkey noises made at them.

“If I hear someone racially abusing me from the stand I am walking off the pitch, 100 per cent, and hope that my team-mates walk off with me. I am going straight down that tunnel. Send me off, ban me for 10 games, but you are not getting me back on.

“If me or any player walked off the pitch, I think that would be front page news. I do not think we are very far away from it happening and only then do I think people will start to pull their fingers out and do something about it.”

Taylor says the incident involving Kean this week was further evidence of a growing tide of racism.

Bonucci was criticised for saying 19-year-old Kean, who was born in Italy to Ivorian parents, was partly to blame and that responsibility should be shared “50-50” because he celebrated a goal by spreading his arms while facing Cagliari fans. Bonucci later said he had been “too hasty” and “misunderstood”.

“For someone like Bonucci, who is at the top of the game playing for one of the dominant teams in Europe, to say something like that is disgusting,” says Taylor.

“As footballers we are supposed to be leading the line and you have got this idiot saying that? I am sorry but for him to say that it is his fault he is being racially abused is a f****** disgrace.”

Taylor believes prison sentences would be appropriate punishment for racism offences. “You need to take the hardest of stances,” he adds. “If that means custodial time, it means custodial time. There has to be a severe punishment.

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“If we can educate people, we might get somewhere. Until that happens, nothing is going to change. Babies are not born racist. It is learned behaviour. Ninety nine per cent of the time the people who come out with these things are unintelligent.”

He added: “I saw an advert yesterday for the Premier League’s ‘No Room for Racism’ campaign. You see all the players saying ‘racism this, racism that’.

“What hit me was Raheem Sterling’s face at the end. He was the last quote. I do not know Raheem but [my impression was that] he did not believe [anything was going to change].

“He was asked to sit in front of a camera and say, ‘look we are doing something about it’. I could get 100 footballers to say five words on camera to make an advert. It does not mean anything. We can sit here and say racism is bad until we are blue in the face. But what are we doing about it?”

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