Platini to probe alleged racism by Lazio fans aimed at Spurs stars Lennon and Defoe

Posted Saturday, September 22, 2012 by Dailymail

The group’s executive director Piara Powar said: ‘If UEFA really want to set the bar high, if they want to send out a strong message, they could move directly to something like a match behind closed doors.

‘They could suspend that, perhaps, and then if something happens further down the line, they can trigger that. There needs to be hard symbolic action taken when these instances occur.’

Last season Porto were fined €20,000 by Uefa for racist chanting directed at Mario Balotelli during Manchester City’s Europa League match against them. But indicating that they felt the Balotelli incident was relatively minor, UEFA then fined Nicklas Bendtner £80,000 for revealing Paddy Power-branded underpants when celebrating a goal at Euro 2012.

On Friday Chelsea boss Roberto Di Matteo also criticised Twitter users who sent racist messages to John Mikel Obi following his mistake in the 2-2 draw with Juventus on Wednesday.

The midfielder quit Twitter and the club reported two incidents of ‘totally unacceptable, disgusting and abhorrent’ abuse to police, vowing to ban any fan found to have engaged in such behaviour.

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