By Daily Sports on January 17, 2018

It’s somewhat funny how the noise of the racism accusation leveled against Liverpool’s ace attacker Roberto Firminho by Everton’s young defender Mason Holgate has considerably quietened down.

Let’s refresh the memory a little bit. Liverpool hosted Everton in a bitter Merseyside derby in the English FA Cup recently and during the feisty clash, Everton’s Holgate violently pushed Firminho into the advertising hoardings. The livid Liverpool man furiously reacted, using some words on Holgate, who got incensed and had to be restrained by teammates from escalating the incident further. Colgate (21) complained to the ref and his teammates that Firminho had called him the racist term ‘nigger’.

Underscoring the weight of such accusations, the FA has decided to launch an investigation into the incident and to determine whether there is truth in Holgate’s accusation.

“The FA can confirm that referee Bobby Madley was made aware of an allegation during the Liverpool versus Everton game at Anfield last night and has subsequently reported this to the FA, which will now begin making enquiries into the matter,” read an English FA statement.

Just as we were bracing for what would be the outcome of such investigations, with some UK newspapers already deploying lip readers to figure out what Firminho actually said to Holgate in Portuguese, Liverpool fans were doing their own research on Holgate and a search of his Twitter history revealed a history of serious anti-gay tweets.

After the match, Liverpool fans shared screenshots of tweets apparently sent by Holgate between 2012 and 2013.

One reads: “faggot why?”

Another says: “No but your a glorysupporter and a battyboy!)”

And a third reads: “Fag! We’re of Saturday if your feeling it”.

After the tweets were shared, Holgate deleted his Twitter account.

According to reports, Everton FC is investigating Holgate.

Premier League footballer Andre Gray was in 2016 banned for four games by the FA over tweets suggesting that gays should be “burned”.

Andre Gray, a striker for Burnley, faced heavy criticism after shocking homophobic tweets from 2012 resurfaced online.

He wrote: “Is it me or are there gays everywhere? #Burn #Die #MakesMeSick”.

Gray did not appeal, and was set to “attend a one-to-one FA education course”, and agreed to pay a £25,000 fine.

Gray said previously: “I would like to respond to media reports with regards to previous tweets posted from my Twitter account.

“Firstly, I want to offer a sincere and unreserved apology to anybody I may have offended in relation to these tweets. The tweets were posted four years ago when I was a completely different person to the man I am now. I was at a very different point in my life back then – one that I’ve worked hard to move on from.

“Thankfully a lot has changed in my life since then. I have experienced a lot over the past four years and have had to take responsibility for a number of things in my life which has enabled me to mature and grow as a person since that time.

“I have a lot of regrets regarding a number of things I’ve done in the past and realise I have made some big mistakes, none more so than these tweets, but I would like to stress that I’ve worked incredibly hard to completely transform my life since that time.”

“To clarify, I do not hold the beliefs written in those tweets whatsoever. I can assure everybody that I am absolutely not homophobic and as said previously I can only apologise and ask for forgiveness to anyone I offended.

“Thankfully I am not the guy I was back then and will continue to work hard both on and off the pitch to become a better person.”

That Holgate has hurriedly deleted his twitter account and refrained from commenting on the racism allegation he made against Firminho suggests a man that is on the defensive, and one who knows all too well that the zeitgeist in England and Western Europe finds his anti gay sentiment unacceptable.

Living in a liberal society where public statements against people simply on the basis of their sexual orientation is publicly taken as hate speech, Holgate realises now, if he hadn’t, that his tweets were a careless discriminatory which has no place in the policies of employers who have a (at least publicly held) policy of workplace diversity, where people should not be subjected to playground bullying simply on the basis of what they are by nature.

Young players coming up need to be careful about their tweets and Facebook posts because people are reading them, and what’s said online can always resurface to haunt the author.

As aspiring role models, young players need to be educated to know that in order to be positive role models, they must be careful about what they say, because someone somewhere could be hurt by  their words and won’t ever forget.

Whatever the outcome of the English FA’s investigation into the racism allegations that Holgate has leveled against Firm in how, the young England star should know that he has come to justice with his hands not so clean as regards open discrimination against people.

Source Daily Sports

Posted January 17, 2018

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