{{QPR manager Mark Hughes has warned it will be almost impossible to completely rid football of racism.}}<\/p>\n
More than 30 players from eight Premier League clubs chose not to support the annual Kick It Out campaign over the weekend by refusing to wear a T-shirt.<\/p>\n
Among them was QPR defender Anton Ferdinand, who was racially abused by Chelsea captain John Terry last season.<\/p>\n
Hughes said: “It’s very difficult to eradicate totally. Let’s hope that will happen but we will be a lot greyer.”<\/p>\n
Ferdinand was joined by team-mates Djibril Cisse, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Nedum Onouha and Junior Hoilett in making his protest at the perceived lack of action about racism during the warm-up before Sunday’s 1-1 draw Everton – three visiting players, Victor Anichebe, Sylvain Distin and Steven Pienaar also chose not to wear the T-shirts.<\/p>\n
“My understanding at the beginning of the week was that everyone was going to comply,” said Hughes.<\/p>\n
“But a lot of people have made stands and possibly some of our guys felt that they needed to stand shoulder to shoulder which I think you have to accept.<\/p>\n
“Any campaign that looks to address an ill in our game and in society needs to be supported irrespective of the fact of whether they are doing enough or not.<\/p>\n
“[Some] players feel it’s time to make a stand and try and affect the authorities in terms of what they’re doing, and if it does that and they are better in fighting racism in sport then it’s a good thing.”<\/p>\n
Everton manager David Moyes backed his trio of players, although he conceded he did not necessarily agree with them.<\/p>\n
“I spoke to the players and they decided it was their decision,” Moyes said.<\/p>\n
“I listened to their reasons and I told them my reasons why I thought they should [back the campaign by wearing a T-shirt] but ultimately it’s one of these things. They have to make that decision.”<\/p>\n
Manchester United’s Rio Ferdinand, Anton’s brother, incurred the wrath of his manager Sir Alex Ferguson by electing not to wear a T-shirt prior to their game against Stoke on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Ferguson felt he had been embarrassed by Rio’s decision and that he had let the club down after having said on Friday that “everyone should be united”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{QPR manager Mark Hughes has warned it will be almost impossible to completely rid football of racism.}} More than 30 players from eight Premier League clubs chose not to support the annual Kick It Out campaign over the weekend by refusing to wear a T-shirt. Among them was QPR defender Anton Ferdinand, who was racially […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[75],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-3637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-homenews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3637"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=3637"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=3637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}