Sacchi: Too many blacks in Italian youth teams

"Italian football is now without dignity or pride because it makes too many foreigners playing also in the youth teams," he is quoted as saying by La Gazzetta dello Sport. "In our youth sides there are too many black players.

"I'm certainly not racist, which my history as a coach proves, starting with Frank Rijkaard, but watching the Viareggio Tournament, I would say that there are too many black players.

"Italy has no dignity, no pride, you cannot have teams made up of 15 foreigners."

Sacchi later attempted to clarify that he is not racist, but that his comments were misunderstood.

"I have been misinterpreted. Imagine if I'm racist. I only said that I saw at a game with a team that fielded four black guys.

"My story is clear, I always coached teams with different colours and I bought many, both in Milan and at Real Madrid. I just wanted to point out that we are losing pride and our national identity."

http://www.goal.com/en/news/10/italy/2015/02/17/8995502/sacchi-too-many-blacks-in-italian-youth-teams?ICID=SP_HN_HP_RI_1_2

I know some people on here cannot talk about race without getting emotional but please try and have a logical debate about this.

Some people call it racist, others call it nationalism. I rather have our acadamy full of catalan boy's than foreign boys. Calling them 'blacks' isnt very smart.

I understand what he's saying in the sense that people being eligible to play for a country because their great grandad's friend's housekeeper was from that country is ludicrous ie. Diego Costa, but Saachi's wording was absolutely ridiculous. Don't these fat cats have PR cronies hired precisely for these sorts of things?

yea, terrible choice of words

What Lex said, I don't think he meant it to come out like that but it just comes across so bad. This is the problem with most people, not they are racists in particular but they don't understand how to represent their viewpoint without sounding racist.

Completely inappropriate comments from Sacchi and he deserves the censure he's receiving. The idea of promoting young players who can contribute to the national team doesn't need defending as it's the basis of international sport but he introduced a racial framework that is archaic and regressive. His comments are essentially suggesting that a black player can not be Italian and if he believed otherwise he should have already come out and apologised instead of complaining that he was misrepresented.

I don't have an issue with Sacchi wanting to promote the use of Italian youngsters but by seeing colour he has completely ruined his own point. If the academies were flooded with white Spaniards and Germans it would be just as damaging for the national team. It reminds me of Diamanti complaining that youngsters like Okaka were taking up the space of young Italian players.

i'll take an italian born  & developed black player over those argentines that they're always trying to draft .

I'm sorry but do people not associate nations with skin colour? I find that hard to believe. Anyways I am sure he meant native Italians. I still consider France as an African All stars team. It's not racist to want to see your natives go through. So if Italy's whole XI was 100% black players nobody would find it weird?

He wasn't talking about the national team, he was talking about the youth teams. The team that made his blood boil was none other than Inter

Sacchi had the role of  national youth teams ' coordinator , and he combined absolutely NOTHING . So what was he doing at that time?

He should admit his mistakes for   the manner in which  he managed youth team when was called to do it  from governmental bodies.

I don't believe the problems of Italian youth teams are the foreign players tbh.

The youth teams basically are rated important so as to get capital gain , this more than faint hope to get a  player good for own first team every year.

This is how it works in Italy.

jibers wrote:I'm sorry but do people not associate nations with skin colour? I find that hard to believe. Anyways I am sure he meant native Italians. I still consider France as an African All stars team. It's not racist to want to see your natives go through. So if Italy's whole XI was 100% black players nobody would find it weird?

if sacchi's "fear" is that italy's whole 11 would be 100% black then that's just ridiculous, the black to white ratio in italy isn't that close and most of the africans that migrate there are from northern africa. two, even if that happened, then it simply means those are the people playing better. we often forget, this is sports, politics and favoritism exists, but its largely a meritocracy based industry. if youth coaches are recruiting young foreigners, then i'm sure they are recruiting who they think are the best and not just any and everybody

there is nothing wrong in one wanting his own natives to go through, but results come first, even at youth level. i seriously doubt that natives are being ignored for foreign youngsters, its a case of looking at other avenues when results may not be forthcoming...its sports, not some presidential campaign, at the end of the day you want to have the best team, if they are all from the local jurisdiction, fine, if not, who cares, as long as they get the job done

another thing i doubt is sacchi's general statement, i'm sure he looked at two or three youth teams and made that generalization....followers of italian football can fill me in on this- even within those teams he used to make that generalization, i doubt its a squad of 17 black players, he probably saw 5 or 6 black players who were probably the highest ranked or best players on the team and blew a fuse.

his comments were very foolish, not because they sounded ignorant (i know in this day and age people blow the lightest things out of proportion) but because of who they were aimed at...these are kids we're talking about. they face enough challenges already as foreigners acclimatizing into a new society and culture. sacchi making block head statements does nothing to help them at all....and what makes him sound more foolish was saying "i signed black players, i signed rijkaard", how many times have we heard people spew some racist, antisemitic, or ethnic slurs and say "i have jewish/black/white/mexican/japanese friends"....when aragonez said what he did about henry, what was his go-to bail out? even sterling said he had black friends and hired black people

point is, i don't think sacchi's racist, its one thing to take aim at professionals and block heads like balotelli, who are professionals (well when talking about balo, i use the word 'professional' loosely) and are trained and prepared for media bashings, but when it has to do with youngsters, who are probably already alienated in one form or another, this does nothing to help...and trust me, many of those guys probably won't play for the national team if that's his concern; its not like they've fully developed their skills or talents yet

He shouldn't have used the word 'blacks', 'foreigners' would have done and not sounded racist. His worry is a legitimate one, though, the question that what are the criteria for a player to be eligible to play for a country and are they too loose or tight or just right as things stand.

jibers wrote:I still consider France as an African All stars team.  

what a ridiculous thing to say ,
apparently players born , raised , and developed in france shouldn't play for france but for countries they have absolutely no connection with and played no part in their development as players    .

Art Morte wrote:He shouldn't have used the word 'blacks', 'foreigners' would have done and not sounded racist. His worry is a legitimate one, though, the question that what are the criteria for a player to be eligible to play for a country and are they too loose or tight or just right as things stand.

his fears jump the gun....these are youth team players, not professionals already playing, changing nationalities. you are looking at it from a diego costa standpoint, who did not play in atleti or spain's youth teams and after a fantastic year chose to play for spain. these are foreigners playing in the youth team who youth coaches have an opportunity to mold, develop and educate them on their club football and philosophies.

also, these players are not even selected into the serie a first teams, so talk about them playing for the national team already is pushing the cart before the horse. for all you know, they're going to play for their own national teams when or if they get better, and that's a big 'if' cos its not like their youth teams are setting the world alight....too many assumptions, it would be like if 12 years ago, spanish people complained that messi, who at that time was in barcelona's youth set up, shouldn't be eligible to play for spain; like who says the kid even wants to play for spain (although i'm sure nobody made such a complaint with respect to messi)....sacchi blew a fuse for no reason, i seriously doubt there's a black renaissance going on in the youth team, dude just saw a few teams with maybe 4, 5 black players and blew a fuse .....when inter had very few italians and many argentine players it wasn't an issue.....but all of a sudden the youth team is now a cause for concern? and he's NOT talking about the u21, cos that's filled with all italian players, he's talking about club youth setups ....lol sacchi's gone bonkers

So he forgot that players like Balotelli are italian apparently

I think what he's trying to say is right, but obviously he not only put his foot in his mouth, he put his head up his ass while at it.

Legendary coach, one of the finest, but wow...if this hadn't happened in France so many times I would've certainly said "Only in Italy".

Teams should just look at youngsters for who has the highest chance of making it in the adult game and thus improving their first team and not overlook brighter talents elsewhere just to fit italians. Of course it's as long as you do it following the rules and don't end up like Barca.

His defense that he's not racist because he's bought and sold black players in his career is just shocking. Like, do you even realize what you just said? Christ...

And to be honest this statement can't be used or rationalized as if he had used foreigner instead of black in order for this to make some sort of sense. The fact that to him, blackness is a determiner for foreign, a contributor to the lack of "honor" in Italian youth teams, is the problem here. This is clearly racially based and not solely a misguided sense of nationalism

VendettaRed07 wrote:His defense that he's not racist because he's bought and sold black players in his career is just shocking. Like, do you even realize what you just said? Christ...

I'm not accusing Sacchi of being racist, but I find it pretty hilarious when racists defend themselves saying they have black friends, work colleagues etc.

Art Morte wrote:He shouldn't have used the word 'blacks', 'foreigners' would have done and not sounded racist. His worry is a legitimate one, though, the question that what are the criteria for a player to be eligible to play for a country and are they too loose or tight or just right as things stand.

Maybe he meant '' black '' and not foreigners. There are more white foreigners in the Italian NT than black ones right now ( Thiago Motta ans Osvaldo versus Balotelli ) .
I bet that for some people they would rather have white foreigners in their teams than black foreigners. Nothing with being necessarily racist tho. So when he use '' black '' I don't think he meant foreigners. I'm a black person and I fully understand if an Italian would rather have 10 Osvaldo in his team than 10 Balotelli .

National teams are supposed to represent the nationality. I have to say he is Right but using a bad choice of words made it like a racist comment which clearly is not.Anyways i leave ItalianProblems to Italians.

There's racism everywhere to varying degrees.  Problem i found interesting in Europe is that people are clearly racist and think they're not  It's hilarious.

If race is a factor in whatever action, decision, etc.... it's racism.  There's malicious and unfair racism and harmless/benign racism on each side of the spectrum... but it's still racism

The problem is that something that seems harmless to you may in fact be very hurtful to the target... that's why racism of any kind is unacceptable.

sportsczy wrote:There's racism everywhere to varying degrees.  Problem i found interesting in Europe is that people are clearly racist and think they're not  It's hilarious.

I don't think/know if this is a european problem but 100% agreed.

As i said Living in a multicultural country its hard to grasp the idea but that doesn't make the it racist