UEFA Close Sparta Prague Racism Case Amidst Damning Silence From The SFA.

UEFA has closed its investigation against Sparta Prague for alleged racism citing lack of evidence.

How about that?

Get ready for a chorus of voices calling out the European governing body for being soft on bigots, when in fact they have to work to a set of rules and those rules require a little thing called proof before they can take action.

Look out, in particular, for the perverse spectacle of a prominent defence lawyer calling for kangaroo courts and harsher punishments for alleged offenders whether there’s sufficient grounds for punishing them or not.

This is only one of the oddities of the Glen Kamara saga.

I believe Kamara was racially abused by a Slavia Prague player.

I do not believe that one man’s word against another is sufficient for branding a footballer a racist. I do not believe that the verdict justified some of the scandalous commentary against his club, who only did what any other club would have in standing by their player.

One of the clubs to stand alongside Ibrox was Celtic, shamefully choosing to ignore that we stood by Alexander Tonev on those very grounds.

It’s not that we shouldn’t have stood by Kamara, but that we added our voices to the condemnation of the Czech club.

UEFA was forced to investigate this incident because they had a specific complaint from Ibrox.

There were any legitimate grounds for that complaint.

That they have dismissed it is no surprise, and nor is the certainty of them getting stick for it, although they could only work with the evidence which was presented to hand, and nothing indicated a racist motive.

Glen Kamara was booed. He wasn’t targeted for racial abuse.

He was booed. Other Ibrox players were booed, and not just those of colour.

This spurious claim was one of the elements of this UEFA would have looked into. They found no evidence to support it.

The SFA can now decide to respect this verdict or not.

Frankly, if they condemn it then they ought to be prepared for foreign associations commenting on their own decision making process. They are in hot enough water with this verdict if they think they can leave their Equalities Officer Marvin Bartley in his post.

This ought to be the final thing that sees him ushered to the door.

But our association has no shame.

If it was concerned about the promotion of bigotry it would be looking, tonight, at Ibrox itself and its scandalous advert about which I’ll be writing later.

The defence that is being proffered – that it’s only a tune – is lamentable and insults our collective intelligence.

The anti-racism charities are vocal in their condemnation of Ibrox tonight … I wonder if the club will address those concerns in their inevitable ranting statement about this latest development at UEFA.