UEFA has banned the Slavia Prague player Ondrej Kudela for ten games after finding him guilty of racially abusing Glen Kamara. They believe that on the balance of evidence he did it and they have branded him a bigot and acted accordingly.
So, we can now hang that tag around his neck. It is a heavy one to bear.
There are those who will say it is not enough; it is a hard-core sentence though, and especially when you take it in context with the other decisions they have made here.
Glen Kamara, for an act of retaliation in the tunnel, has been banned for three games.
If Police Scotland has the evidence UEFA looked at he’ll also be looking at an assault charge. He is the victim of a despicable act, but neither the regulations nor the laws accept that as mitigation for taking justice into your own hands.
As harsh as this might sound, he is lucky that’s all UEFA has done to him.
In addition to this, the club has been fined for failing to control its players. It’s a paltry slap on the wrist of a mere £7000, but it’s a check mark against them for the future.
Finally, UEFA has deemed Kemar Roofe’s karate kick a “dangerous assault” on a fellow professional and banned him for four games.
He cannot be in the slightest bit surprised by that charge or that verdict or that sentence. He too is lucky not to have gotten a much harsher punishment for that disgraceful challenge.
If Kudela got off lightly, as some will certainly suggest, then he’s not alone in this because all three of them could easily have faced much tougher sanctions.
If you think Kudela has gotten away with something here, consider that his ban is more double that which Roofe got for knocking the goalkeeper unconscious and requiring him to visit a hospital.
UEFA’s sliding scale of sanctions put racism on the pitch at the very top of the ladder, and I have no problem with that. Racism is a scourge on football and Kudela’s act was bilious and cowardly and deserves a harsh sentence.
He also takes away from this damnation.
An article I read earlier in the week, whilst researching something else, has Alexander Tonev amongst the worst signings at Celtic in the last 20 years, and the writer says “no need to explain why.”
That’s the level of odium that this guy will have attached to him forevermore, like all those accused of it.
(Unless you’re the Duke of Edinburgh, in which case all of Scottish football stands in silent respect to you. Like I said, I don’t pretend to understand how people arrive at these decisions.)
Tam McManus is the first out of the gate to attack UEFA’s verdict saying that the player should have been banned for a year. Earlier in the week he tweeted his anger at the suggestion that Kamara could get a five match ban from UEFA for settling the matter himself.
McManus clearly has no problem with players acting as lynch mobs, which makes anything else he has to say on this completely ridiculous. But he won’t be the only one.
UEFA has done what it is empowered to do.
Yet none of the three players has faced the maximum possible sanction.
They’ve stopped short of overkill.
They have behaved proportionately.
I think they’ve got it right.
Kudela’s ban will include matches in the Euros; he’s not going to play in the Euros as a result.
Kamara’s are limited to UEFA “club competitions” which rules him out of the Champions League qualifiers next season.
UEFA are damned if they do and damned if they don’t here.
The Ibrox club is almost certain to release a moon-howling press release where they play the victim card for all it’s worth.
They will be joined by a chorus of idiot voices from all across the spectrum who will propose draconian nonsense such as kicking Slavia out of Europe for the renegade actions of one footballer.
But as has been clear from the start, there are three separate verdicts from three separate acts.
Kudela has the ten game ban.
A kung-fu assault on Slavia’s keeper and Kamara’s Charles Bronson act of vigilante justice don’t draw that sentence when you combine them together … so what someone says is judged more harshly than what two other footballers have done.
You can raise your hands and raise your boots and commit what UEFA describes as “assault” and cop a lesser punishment.
And it is right that this be the case.
So do not listen to anyone who says that this is an outrage or a miscarriage of justice or that Ibrox has been hard done by here, because UEFA has done this right, and so none of that is true.