LONDON: Pep Guardiola would consider taking his Manchester City players off the field in protest if any of his stars were the victims of racist abuse.
City star Raheem Sterling spoke out after he and a number of his England teammates were racially abused in an impressive 5-1 victory over Montenegro in Podgorica on Monday, calling for stadium bans.
Guardiola said society’s ills are to blame, but warned against the concerning rise of racist incidents at football games, including in England.
Sterling was also the subject of alleged racist abuse at Chelsea in December, while Arsenal striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang had a banana skin thrown at him in the North London derby against Tottenham in the same month.
“I think in Europe it is, not in football, getting worse,” said Guardiola when asked about the issue. “I am a human being and it’s not nice.
Asked if City would walk off, Guardiola said: “We could do that, yeah.”
Guardiola was backed up in his call for teams to walk off the pitch by Chelsea boss Maurizio Sarri. The Italian wants a new rule allowing matches to be halted if players are racially abused.
Chelsea winger Callum Hudson-Odoi, like Sterling, was racially abused in Montenegro as well as during Chelsea’s Europa League match at Dynamo Kiev earlier in March.
And Sarri said: “”We need a rule I think, a rule for the Premier League, but for all the championships, for all of football. A rule that can permit us to stop the match.
“In every country there are some stupid people I think, so it’s a big problem,” he said.
“I think that we need to do something different, probably it’s right to stop the match for 10 minutes in the first situation.”
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