John Terry has been accused of tarnishing Chelsea s international reputation after the Englishman was found guilty of racism by the FA.
The defender has also been fined 220,000 British pounds and is yet to be disciplined by Chelsea following the outcome of the FA charge after he was found guilty of racially abusing QPR defender Anton Ferdinand.
Lord Triesman, the former FA chairman, has lashed out at Chelsea and is far from impressed by their handling of the situation.
He told The Mirror: Large numbers of people around the world, especially black people, will read about what has happened. And they will wonder how on earth did Chelsea allow that?
The club s international reputation has suffered. Its brand has been damaged.
They should be saying it isn t acceptable as a standard of behaviour.
If I was a Chelsea fan I wouldn t be happy that my club was getting this kind of negative coverage.
If it happened with any other business corporation, like Coca-Cola say, an employee would have been in serious trouble with that organisation.
Triesman was in charge of the FA between 2008 and 2010 but is now urging clubs to introduce their own policies to discipline behaviour such as racial abuse by using harsher punishments to send out a message to their young fans.
Footballers are role models, he declared.
When I was a referee in the 1970s the kids would copy the actions of their heroes they d seen on television the night before.
So it s not true to say that what stars do on the pitch won t influence youngsters. I think clubs like Chelsea – and Liverpool during the Luis Suarez saga – have responsibilities to the next generation.
Clubs should tell their very highly-paid employees what standards are expected of them.
I think Terry should apologise and accept it s not a good standard. I just don t believe in this day and age that anybody can think that it s OK, and that you don t owe an apology for something like that.
