Kim Ekroos, the director of TPS’s operational activities, apologizes for the behavior of the fans. The Turku team’s match has been suspended three times during the season for the same reason.
The First League football match played on Thursday between Turku Palloseura and Pietarsaari Jaro had to be stopped at the end of the first period due to racist shouting. The target was Jaro’s Russian players Sergey Lazarev and Sergei Eremenko.
Jaro’s sports director Tobias Strand was watching the match. He says that he did not hear exactly what was being shouted at the players.
Lazarev is a citizen of Russia. Born in Pietarsaari in 1999, Eremenko has dual citizenship. Eremenko’s older brother Alexei Eremenko Junior played 57 A national matches in his career in a Finnish jersey. Sergei has chosen the Russian national team as his national team.
According to Strand, there was already shouting in the first match between TPS and Jaro this season. Turku Palloseura’s home match has been suspended three times during the season due to racist chanting.
– I wasn’t there myself at the time in Turku, but I got a message that there was shouting already then.
In the match played on Thursday, the home team was better with 3-0 goals.
Seven viewers were removed
The shouts came from the TPS supporter stand, where a group of seven people could be identified. They were removed from the stands after the security personnel’s investigations.
Strand is also satisfied with the fact that TPS’s director of operations Kim Ekroos went separately to apologize for the shouting.
– We are ashamed and sorry that the team’s players were subjected to racist language for the second time in our home match. We have a complete zero tolerance for racism, and people who behave in a racist or inappropriate manner are not welcome in TPS, Ekroos states in the club’s press release.
Racist shouting has come up earlier this season. In August, the referee Mohammed Al-Emara interrupted the match played in Oulu after hearing a racist shout from the stands. It was directed at himself. Al-Emara was born in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia, and moved to Finland with her family as a child.
Actions are needed
Al-Emara, who is respected as a referee, took a strong stand on the matter after the match. He called for more effective measures from the clubs to eradicate racism.
– They say that racists out of the stands, racism out of football. It means that if you act racist, you should have no business in the football stands.
Tobias Strand is on the same lines.
– There should be big penalties for the teams. Those who really feel somewhere. An alternative would be, for example, that the next home match be played without an audience. This is how it has been done in international matches, he says.