Taylor told Sky Sports: "I think it's people turning a blind eye because they don't know what to do"
Friday 20 September 2019 13:36, UK
Neil Taylor says some football authorities are "turning a blind eye" to racism and believes clubs should be forced to play matches behind closed doors if their fans are found guilty of racist abuse.
A number of high-profile incidents have been highlighted in recent months, including the racist abuse aimed at Inter Milan striker Romelu Lukaku and Manchester City forward Raheem Sterling.
Lukaku was targeted by Cagliari supporters during a 2-1 win in Serie A on September 1, but on Wednesday the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) decided there was not enough evidence to punish them.
Sterling has publicly expressed his concern over the lack of action taken by football authorities to deal with the abuse and Taylor - who is one of just two British-Asian players in the Premier League - suggests one way forward is to force clubs to play games in empty stadiums.
"I think Raheem's covered it. I think it is hypocrisy," Taylor told Sky Sports. "I think it's people turning a blind eye because they don't know what to do, people in the organisation go 'what are we supposed to do here?'
"Of course you've got to go down to the root of it as well and what the people in the crowd are thinking. It's ridiculous and they're probably people who are enjoying the fact that they are now making the news about it because that's probably their one claim to fame in life, but as an organisation you have to clamp down on it.
"If those fans then can't come to the next 10 football matches because the stadiums are completely empty then it affects everyone. It affects the football club, it affects the commercial side of the club because they won't make money because there's nobody in the ground, which then means the cameras don't turn up and it has a knock-on effect.
"That way it goes all the way down to the fans who then might think 'we can't be doing this because otherwise we don't get to see our football club - they're not on TV and we can't go to the stadium'.
"The club would then get a bad name and I think that would then force them to find out who's doing it. They would then go 'listen, look at the problems this has caused us. We need to find out directly who is doing it, what section of the crowd and find out who they are.' I know that's a difficult process but it has to start from the top."
As well as football authorities being urged to punish groups of supporters targeting players inside stadiums, social media companies have also come under increasing pressure to address the issue of online racist abuse.
Tammy Abraham, Kurt Zouma, Paul Pogba and Marcus Rashford are just a few of those who have been racially abused online in recent weeks, and representatives from the Premier League, the FA and the EFL gathered at Twitter's UK headquarters in central London on Friday to discuss the issue.
Manchester United forward Rashford believes if social media users had to use their real identities then online racism would be easy to police and Taylor, who stopped using social media almost three years ago, agrees with the England international.
"I don't know what happened to the old phrase 'if you've got nothing nice to say, don't say it at all' but I think too many people now are using computer screens to hide behind," Taylor added.
"I think the corporations - Twitter, Facebook - don't do enough quite frankly. They know the problems are there but they're still interested in the traffic and the amount of people they have coming through their websites, instead of actually looking after the people who are on there.
"It's quite simple - you should have to put your details, whether it's a passport or some sort of ID in for when you register for these profiles, it's not that difficult is it?
"There's plenty of channels now that are happy to take the mick out of people and use people's unfortunate moments to get traffic through their website to then get people commenting on it and saying bad stuff. Then when someone has mental health problems off the back of something like that they turn around and say they're going to help their mental health.
"To me that's incredible. The same people who are causing the problem are the same people who say they are going to help with the problem."
