USELESS UEFA
Kamara lawyer lashes out at their handling of racism case
GLEN KAMARA’S lawyer has hit out at UEFA’s handling of the Rangers player’s racism allegation against Ondrej Kudela, insisting the ‘overwhelming evidence’ warrants at least a 12-month ban for the Slavia Prague defender.
Kamara claims to have been called a ‘f***ing monkey’ by the Czech international defender in the Europa League clash at Ibrox on March 18.
Kudela has strenuously denied the allegation — and claimed the Rangers midfielder physically assaulted him in the tunnel afterwards.
UEFA yesterday opened legal proceedings against both players, with Kamara potentially facing a five-game ban for ‘serious assault’ amid claims he punched the Slavia player.
The charges against Kudela are more nuanced. He faces a minimum ten-game ban if found guilty of insulting the ‘human dignity’ of Kamara on the grounds of his skin colour and race.
The 34-year-old also faces a lesser charge of
insulting Kamara, having already claimed he called the Rangers player a ‘f***ing guy’, rather than the racial slur which Kamara and team-mate Bongani Zungu reported hearing. Having effectively admitted the lesser charge, Kudela has been handed a provisional one-match ban by UEFA ‘without prejudice’ to any ruling the body might make on the racism allegations. But Aamer Anwar, the lawyer representing Kamara, believes the punishment to be inadequate — and has accused UEFA of failing to understand the seriousness of the matter. Calling for the authorities to throw the book at Kudela, Anwar wrote on Twitter yesterday that the player ought to be handed a year-long ban at the very least. In an official statement released on behalf of his client, Anwar said: ‘Kudela will not be allowed to play the Europa League match against Arsenal, which also means that Police Scotland will not be able to question him on Thursday with regards to their criminal investigation against him. ‘I understand that Police Scotland have a sufficiency of evidence to proceed with charges against Kudela, without the need to speak to him. ‘Whilst UEFA have carried out an initial investigation which makes damning reading about Kudela’s conduct, this initial one-match ban does little to instil confidence in UEFA being serious about stamping out racism in football and they must take robust action going forward. ‘The defence put forward by Slavia Prague can only be described as incredible or fantasy. ‘A one-match ban will make no difference whatsoever to Kudela or Slavia Prague. ‘A one-game suspension smacks of “tokenism” and gives little confidence to black players who face such vile abuse. ‘The overwhelming evidence against Kudela means UEFA must take immediate action to punish him robustly for the crime he is accused of.’ Police Scotland were intent on questioning Kudela upon his return to the United Kingdom, but he will not travel with the Slavia squad for tomorrow’s Europa League clash at Arsenal due to ‘health problems’.