"I despise Slavia players, we waited 45 minutes for them"

Rangers were knocked out of the Europa League at the last 16 stage on Thursday night by Slavia Prague. The Czech outfit won 0-2 thanks to goals from Peter Olayinka and Nicolae Stanciu and Rangers had Kemar Roofe and Leon Balogun sent off in the second period. 

However, the match was marred by an incident of alleged racism involving Glen Kamara and Ondrej Kudela. The Rangers players were furious after the latter went up to Glen Kamara and whispered something in his ear and covered his own mouth. Kamara shouted to the referee Orel Grinfeld that Kudela had made a racist comment and that led to a scuffle. Connor Goldson and Kudela were both booked, but that was not all. 

After the match, Kemar Roofe was racially abused on social media after his red card which injured the keeper while Slavia released a statement denying racism from Kudela. They also said that they could not get into the dressing room for more than 30 minutes post game and that Kudela was beaten up by Rangers players in the tunnel while Gerrard watched on. 

Now, Connor Goldson has told 'Sky Sports' that he "despises" the Slavia players. "I don't think I've ever had hatred on a football pitch like I did yesterday. I've never really been angry on a football pitch to that extent. But I genuinely despise them."

He then revealed that his team waited for their opponents to enter the tunnel area: "Me and the whole team waited for them in the tunnel for a whole 45 minutes and they didn't come in. I'm proud of every single teammate, every member of staff in this football club, from the chairman coming down to support us, to Ross Wilson the director of football, to the manager standing by us. There's so much speech about how to eradicate it, how it's getting better, but it's not getting better at all, it's getting worse," Goldson said.

"You come into the changing room after the game and you see boys with monkey or banana emojis all over their social media, getting called words that a white person could never imagine being called. It's horrible."

He finished off slamming the authorities for their lack of action in trying to combat racism: "I was really hurt to see what happened but it's never going to change. As black players, we're used as pawns in an industry to make money. I feel that's all that we are and the representatives won't do enough, they never have done enough," he concluded. 

UEFA revealed on Friday that they have opened their own investigation into all the incidents that went on, but the unsavoury scenes during and after the match will almost certainly lead to some sort of sanction for both clubs.

 

March 19, 2021