FIFA Secretary General Fatma Samoura on Tuesday said Italian football authorities are likely to face disciplinary action over the treatment of Pescara midfielder Sulley Muntari.
Thirty-two-year-old Muntari was sent off after leaving the field claiming he was racially abused during a Serie A game.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that he was initially banned for one game but had this overturned by the Italian Football Federation (FIGC).
“We have a committee in charge of monitoring this and the committee will take action,” Muntari said in an interview.
“What matters is that the committee has to act and the sooner the better.
“I have my personal feelings on anybody that is treated like he has been treated, on the pitch and off the pitch, but I’m not here for my personal matters.
“I’m here to make sure that FIFA takes, through the committee, the appropriate action for any single discriminatory action.”
On Tuesday, FIFA president Gianni Infantino said he would speak to the ex-Portsmouth playerMuntari had expressed the belief that FIFA and its European equivalent UEFA were not taking racism issues seriously.
“We will work together,’’ said Infantino, who also said he intends to talk to the head of FIGC, Carlo Tavecchio.
NAN reports that the world football governing body was criticised for disbanding its anti-racism task force in September, with the organisation defended this decision at the time.
Samoura had said then that it had fulfilled the “mandate’’ for which it was set up in 2013 — which was to provide recommendations for a “strong programme’’ to tackle racism.
A number of these recommendations have been put into action.
These include the introduction of an Anti-Discrimination Monitoring System to assess 850 high-risk matches for potential discriminatory incidents during the 2018 World Cup qualifiers and friendlies.
Samoura who spoke ahead of this week’s FIFA Congress meeting in Bahrain is toeing a different line to that of Infantino.
“I don’t have to call people anytime they have been victim of an abuse.
“We’ve been regularly publicising the action of the committee on every action that relates to racism, homophobic chants and any kind of discrimination.
“We have monitoring too on anti-discrimination. We have heavy sanctions every time we have been receiving reports.’’(NAN)
OLAL