@vsrsus: Alex Neil’s comments undermine the seriousness of racism in football. Protecting a player from racist abuse should never be treated as an inconvenience. On Tuesday night, his Millwall side lost at The Den after Swansea’s South Korea international Eom Ji-sung was allegedly racially abused while warming up as a substitute. The abuse reportedly came from the stands behind the Swansea dugout. The referee stopped play in the 65th minute, with the game restarting around seven minutes later. But Neil criticised the stoppage, saying it “kill(ed) the momentum”, with the game against the league leaders goalless at the time — essentially relegating the threat of racism to something less important than the three points. When we say some things are bigger than football, this is exactly what we mean. Neil spoke about stopping the game for racist abuse the way you’d talk about a floodlight failure. An inconvenient distraction from what people actually care about. That attitude sends a damaging message to his own dressing room, too. What are his players supposed to take from those comments? That protecting them matters, but only until it costs the team? No player should have to wonder whether their manager would put the result before their welfare. It’s already taken English football far too long to enforce anything close to meaningful protocol for abuse inside stadiums. Comments like Neil’s chip away at that progress. As much as we all like to poke fun at caricatures of “woke nonsense” in the game, there is a very real and growing resistance towards inclusivity in football. Whether he intended to or not, Neil is emboldening that faction with these comments. We have to remain vigilant and call out these flippant attitudes towards stamping out racism whenever they come up. Sending love and strength to Eom. Racism has no place in our game. It’s on us all to ensure this scourge is eradicated at every level.

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Wednesday 14 October 2026 13:35:03 GMT