Nigeria coach Stephen Keshi, in collaboration with his employers the
Nigeria Football Federation, has responded to the query the world
football governing body, FIFA issued him. The query is over his alleged
racist remark targeted at Malawi technical adviser Tom Sainfiet.
The Nigeria coach was given a September 16 deadline to respond to the query.
The General Secretary of the NFF Musa Amadu who spoke with The Punch
on Tuesday confirmed that the response to FIFA’s Zurich headquarters was
dispatched on Monday deadline.
He said, “Yes, we met the deadline. The response was sent by email
and fax. And today (Tuesday) we are sending the hard copy by courier
service.”
Amadu said he was positive that FIFA would understand the background under which the statement was made.
“We’ve explained the circumstances under which the statement was
made; it was under normal pre-match antics we see of different coaches.
“Of course we all know that Keshi is somebody who has cross-cultural
background and incidentally played his professional football career in
Belgium where Saintfiet comes from. He was never involved in any racist
row all through his career as a player. His intentions were pure and not
the way it appears; they were merely based on football relations.”
The Malawi federation reported to FIFA what it called ‘racist’ remarks by Keshi aimed at the Belgian.
“We feel the racist remarks by Mr Keshi are not acceptable,” FAM’s
general secretary Suzgo Nyirenda said after their federation sent
official complaint to Zurich.
“We thought it was a personal attack on our coach and we had to
defend him regardless of skin. We felt we should help our coach and at
the same time put a stop to the racist remarks from Mr Keshi. We have
sent evidence of what Keshi said and we hope FIFA will come up with some
measures to control Mr Keshi.”
In the phone interview aired on UK-based African television show,
Keshi was quoted to have said, “I think the coach of Malawi is crazy. If
he wants to talk to FIFA, he should go back to Belgium. He is not an
African person, he is a white dude, he should go back to Belgium.”
It is not yet clear what type of sanction may be handed Keshi if
found culpable. Active players are usually suspended from a number of
matches and fined as well while teams are made to play their games in
empty stadiums if their fans are guilty of racist acts. In recent times
acts of racism have been rampart in the Italian league while the
separate cases involving Luis Suarez and former England captain John
Terry made the headlines in English football.
FIFA and other regional football governing bodies have stepped hard against racism in response.