Category Archives: Soccer

Racist Tweets Sent to Midfielder Toure

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By Alex O’Connor

Manchester City midfielder, Yaya Toure has been the target of recent racist remarks on Twitter. On Monday, Toure received several racist messages in a matter of a few hours. Toure rejoined Twitter yesterday and was greeted with several racist remarks. Toure describes the messages as a “disgrace” and has noted that he wants “Those people to understand what they’re doing is wrong.” Per BBC Sport, the Greater Manchester Police have received the complaint and are thoroughly investigating the issue. Toure was off of Twitter for over five months due to un-warranted distractions. Unfortunately, there have been additional distractions only a day into reestablishing his Twitter.

Though Toure is facing adversity on the social media spectrum, an anti-discriminatory organization known as Kick it Out has come to his aid. Kick it Out is an international organization that vies for equality and inclusion in all aspects of sport, having their primary focus in soccer. Kick it Out’s official statement read: “We are disturbed by the fact that someone can be treated this way. It makes footballers start to question why they should use these platforms. We are offering Yaya Toure our full support.” This response shows immediate defense to Toure while hammering home the message that racism has no place in soccer.

One specific tweet was caught by authorities and was proved to be written by an avid Chelsea fan. The tweet read: “shut up n*****.” The UK’s DailyStar reported that the fan had apologized, but directly to Toure. His apology was given through Twitter, and was sent to the DailyStar. They are connecting the insincerity of the apology, claiming that his apology was not administered the right way. This is another way in which social media has hurt not only Toure, but the original messenger.

Toure took a five month break from Twitter, because of distractions to his playing. However, just over a year ago, Toure was the subject of racist messages from fans during a Champions League group stage game in Moscow, Russia. There were even suggestions that black players should boycott the upcoming 2018 World Cup in Russia. As a result, the Etihad Stadium in Moscow will be forced to not have any fans present when Toure and Manchester City travel to Moscow. This is a significant revenue loss not only for the stadium and surrounding city, but the entire sport as a whole. Governing bodies are going so far as to prohibit fans from even watching a soccer game in person. In the midst of this situation and Toure’s most recent entanglement, City manager Manuel Pellegrini is confident the latest issue will not effect his performance on the field. Toure has had several poor experiences with social media, and now this incident has proven to be detrimental to the entire sport.

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The Fault in Our Fields

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By Kaleb Page

For many playing football, lacrosse, soccer, or even field hockey it meant playing on a grass surface. With more advancements over the years synthetic turf started to take over as the better alternative to grass. For one the maintenance is relatively cheaper than a sod or natural grass field, and to the eye these fields look great. However, these fields could have a major fault in them that could have a massive impact.

Turf fields, as many would know that have played on them, have tons of small black pellets spread across the entire field.  These pellets are called “crumb rubber” because like the name states, are the leftovers from ground up tires and any other ground up rubber product that can be recycled. Seems like a good idea right? Grind up rubber and re-purpose it to have a second life instead of ending up in landfills compounding that problem we have even further in this country. It is definitely a good idea but at what price?

While it would be a mistake to automatically jump to the conclusion that synthetic turf is causing cancer; the signs are all pointing that direction. As the old adage would say “where there is smoke, there is fire.” The evidence billowing out like smoke all across the country is pointing directly to the fire, the fire so many children and professional athletes play on.

This issue is in the forefront now, but in actuality it has been a growing concern for years. In 2008 synthetic turf fields at Thomas Jefferson Park in Manhattan, NY were found to have high levels of lead in them (eventually those fields were removed). Soccer coach Amy Griffin in an interview with NBC, said that even in 2009 she had suspicions over the black dots when two goalkeepers she was coaching were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In the video below the interview with Amy, which aired earlier this October, chronicled what she experienced along with other startling points as more people are searching for answers now.

It is surprising to look at this topic because I never thought that the playing field put in my hometown could potential be somewhat of a ‘cancer field.’ It is estimated that there are over 4,500 synthetic turf fields across the country and nobody has even let it sink in what the cost could be of playing on this type of surface. The EPA even has a list which states the chemicals that are in tires and other rubber products. What are those chemicals you ask? Well a good part of those chemicals are carcinogens which are contributors to cancer. The EPA is hesitating to make a full judgement, and they stand behind their own studies saying the effect of turf pellets are proven to be insufficient. However, they do admit that there should be more testing done.

It will be interesting to see where this develops and what else can be done to fix this problem. It cannot be ignored anymore and for all the technology we have there should be a way to find a middle ground. One that allows those who are proponents of having turf to keep their turf, while at the same time giving parents, coaches, and players the peace of mind that they aren’t playing on something which could give them cancer someday.

Who knows what the future may hold and what we could see happen. One thing is that we could find ourselves looking back on doing synthetic turf and scratch our heads in amazement. Amazement at the major fault we let go for so long, letting countless players come down with cancer before we even took any action.

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Concussions: Why the World and Soccer Should Listen

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By Kaleb Page

When it comes to the topic of concussions in sports the main sport in question is football. Rarely do you find discussion on concussions in any other sport and one rarely finds criticism thrown at other sports like one does with football. The time has come to look at the sport of soccer or fútbol, as a concerning area for concussions.

Recently in a match between Arsenal and Chelsea, Thibaut Courtois, who is a rising star at goalkeeper for Chelsea, fell victim to a blow that left him unconscious on the pitch. This blow resulted after a ball came in the box towards forward Alexis Sánchez of Arsenal and Courtois slid in to recover the ball before Sánchez could get a boot on the ball. The scene was a car- crash-like pile on the pitch that left Sánchez looking over a knocked out Courtois.

Doctors and training staff members came on to check out the star keeper and run what was said to be the Premier League’s standard for head injuries. Even though the guidelines were ran, there is one disturbing fact about what happened following this severe head injury.

For 14 minutes after the injury and testing, Courtois was allowed to play on. Yes, you read that right. The guy who was just lying on the ground unconscious after receiving a knee to the head was allowed to get up and play like nothing even happened. He was eventually taken out of the game, but that was after the fact that he played on for 14 minutes. Now if this happened in the game of football the uproar would be astounding and would almost guaranteed be the talk of sports for weeks on end. Yet when you turn on the television to SportsCenter, Fox Sports Tonight or even NBC Sports Network do you see the same outcry as if it was a sport like football? The resounding answer is no.

Taylor Twellman, who contributes on ESPN broadcasts for soccer, is a very outspoken member of the soccer community who has had his own battle with concussions in soccer. His own professional career was cut short by the mishandling of a concussion he received while playing. He recently looked at the mishandling of this concussion and the concussions in this sport over the years.

Even if you trace back to the World Cup this summer, Twellman was angered by the handling of concussions on the world’s biggest stage for soccer. Several players received concussions in various games, and yet they played on, or attempted to at least. This prompted a response from Twellman saying that, “It’s barbaric. The way FIFA has turned an eye to head injuries, it’s 1950s-ish.”

I could not agree more with Twellman and some of the others in the soccer community who have concern with the treatment and handling of head trauma in soccer. In this most recent development with a rising star like Courtois, it brings this issue to the forefront where it belongs just like it does with football concussions. In the end the question needs to be asked to FIFA and the respective leagues around the World: Do you care about your athletes’ well-being or are you going to continue to pretend like you care?

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Has the Media Forgotten Hope Solo?

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By Kate Roth

Over the past few weeks, sports media has been flooded with story after story involving a domestic violence issue, with majority of subjects being players from the National Football League.

After the Ray Rice incident, the media seemed to put the Baltimore Ravens and the NFL on blast for how they were handling the situation.

With the increased pressure coming from the media, the NFL commissioner Roger Goodell felt he had to take action. In doing so, Goodell suspended Rice from the league all together and implemented a new policy to help deal with future offenses.

Upon hearing the news of the new suspensions for players involved in domestic violence incidents, the media may have felt that like they had a part in starting that implementation. What the media failed to realize is that while they were so zoned in on attacking the NFL incidents, there were other situations going on in other sports that needed to be addressed as well.

Take for instance the Hope Solo case. Solo, who has had domestic violence issues in the past, has now been accused of assaulting her sister and her 17 year-old nephew. Even with all the media buzz around domestic violence issues in sport, Solo remains active on the Untied States Women’s National Team as she awaits trial in November.

The media has given very little attention to this topic, causing it to fall off the radar. By neglecting to cover this story the media has failed to show the seriousness of the situation and has taken the pressure off of the USWNT to suspend Solo for any period of time.

If the media were to have given the same attention to Solo’s case as they did for the cases in the NFL, the USWNT may have felt enough pressure to address the seriousness of the situation and make an example out of Solo to prevent this from happening with future players.

I think that the media really dropped the ball by neglecting to cover this story and essentially contradicted themselves by giving all of their attention to the NFL issues and ignoring the same issues happening with an athlete in another sport, as if we should pretend that what she did was not as serious.

I hope that if another situation like this were to arise, the media would realize their mistakes and give their attention to all of the serious issues in sport, not just the ones involving the most popular leagues or players.

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