Enough pious statements, time for leaders to clamp down on systemic racism – FIFPro vice-president | OneFootball

FIFPro vice-president Francis Awaritefe said the time for talking and pious statements are over, football leaders must take a stand on racism and discrimination after the Champions League clash between Paris Saint-Germain and Istanbul Basaksehir was postponed.

PSG and Turkish visitors Basaksehir will return on Wednesday to complete their match after Tuesday's Group H meeting was halted amid allegations of racism against the fourth official in Paris.

The fixture was stopped after 13 minutes with both sets of players gathering on the sidelines as Basaksehir substitute Demba Ba remonstrated with fourth official Sebastian Coltescu, saying: "You never said 'this white guy'. Why, when you mention a black guy, do you have to say 'this black guy'?"

Both PSG and Basaksehir then left the field and play did not resume for over two hours before the match was called off and pushed back to Wednesday at 18:55 CET (17:55 GMT) – the contest to restart from the 14th minute and with a new refereeing team in place.

It comes after Millwall fans jeered a demonstration in support of the Black Lives Matter movement prior to Saturday's Championship fixture against Derby County.

As UEFA investigate the incident, Awaritefe – who also serves as the chair of Professional Footballers Australia (PFA) – told Stats Perform News: "The problem in football and sport in general, sports administrators when it comes to issues of human rights, the stuff around discriminations and racism, they make a lot of pious statements around lack of tolerance and how they have zero tolerance.

"I'm sick of those statements, I see FIFA president [Gianni] Infantino doing it all the time and other administrators in making the same statements. I've seen clubs, officials doing it. Even in unions, we're just as to blame as well.

"In my view, it's not changing. It's changed a lot in recent times and we can see it in the reaction of the players. The players are now saying 'we've had enough of this, we won't allow this to happen'. I really applaud the reaction of both teams in saying 'we will not carry on playing football'. It's not normal for any person to go to their workplace and being racially vilified or discriminated against. The anti-black racism that players have to endure when they play football. They're going to their jobs – the stadium is where they work.

"Can you imagine a normal person going to their office or workplace and enduring anti-black or any type of racial vilification in their workplace, whether it's a building site, and then the employer saying I'm going to give the punters three opportunities to stop being racists before I stop work? It just doesn't happen like that. When the president [Aleksander Ceferin] of UEFA himself admits that when he took the job, he didn't have an idea of the extent of racism in Europe, that tells you this just isn't about inter-personal racism but systemic racism in the power structures of football, the people in power and leaders of the games have no idea about racism and discrimination.

"If you're relying on these kinds of people to lead on this issue, you're not going to do that. They have to educate themselves, become aware of it and have some really uncomfortable conversations with black players and minorities to take this issue really seriously. You're not going to address structural discrimination just by wearing t-shirts. Even with the Black Lives Matter movement, a non-violent gesture like kneeling, the Millwall fans were hostile towards it. That tells you how engrained systemic discrimination is within our societies."

"It's not a question of intent. Racism is not a question of intent, the point is, it still causes trauma, hurt and humiliation," the former Australia international said. "If I drove into somebody in a road accident, even if I didn't mean to do it, the point is the damage is done. You can't say well I didn't know. Ignorance is never an excuse for these things. That's the bottom line."

On the united front seen at Parc des Princes, where Kylian Mbappe and the Ligue 1 champions showed their support of Basaksehir, Awaritefe added: "It was massively important. Players are now finding their voice. They're now realising the power they have, they're now realising they have a platform.

"Also, they're now realising abuse of a black colleague is a question of human rights, a question of respect and dignity and this can't be allowed to fly and continue. We can't just say the incident is over, get over it and sort it out later. No. This is a really powerful way to get the attention of the authorities, because until you disrupt the economics of the game through these types of actions, the leaders of the game, the Millwalls of the world, the moral cowardice is engrained and runs deep in their leadership. When players suffer discrimination and ongoing discrimination, rather than tackling the system, they expend more energy trying to appease their crowds and customers, trying not to upset their customers if they're seen to take a strong stance on a social issue such as racial justice. I applaud those players.

"People that are in leadership positions, like I am, it is incumbent on us to actually lead and take a stance and say, 'No, we're not going to put up with this'. I'm not interested in being on a board or any leadership position just so they can tick boxes and say they've ticked the diversity and inclusion box. I'm there to affect change and give voices to those who are victims and don't have the voices. I'm a man and I'm very, very privileged that I'm on these boards because I'm a man but if I was a black woman, I probably wouldn't be there. We need to look at these issues more as structural and systemic issues."

All eyes are now on UEFA amid the investigation, though Awaritefe said: "For me, it's not about coming down like a ton of bricks on officials who you can easily sacrifice because I bet if it was a star player who said the same thing, clubs sometimes take unethical positions on these things like Liverpool on the Luis Suarez incident a couple of years ago.

"It's hard work around this, it requires really frank and honest conversations. There should be mechanism and structures put into place which allows black players to access an affective remedy for the breach of their rights. These are the sorts of things that need to happen. It also means procedurally, the groups of people affected through inequality and discrimination, they need to have a voice in actually being able to develop the mechanisms which are involved in redressing the inequalities and injustices, but it's not the case at the moment. If you look at the three-step protocol, I'm almost certain there was no black person in the room when the executives in Zurich sat down and decided they were going to devise a three-step protocol as a result to racist abuse in stadiums… the marginalised groups, the black players, women, they have to lead this stuff. It's their voices, they're the ones affected and will be affected by whatever remedies that are put into place."