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Ukraine football chief hits back at England's racism complaints
Jun 12, 2012 4:50:00 PM
The country's leading football figure has questioned the validity of criticism from the United Kingdom, citing the omission of Rio Ferdinand from the Three Lions squad
| Bet: | Returns: | England £15.00 | Draw £41.00 | Ireland £62.50 |
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| Bet: | Returns: | England £14.00 | Draw £43.30 | Ireland £55.00 |
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| Bet: | Returns: | England £15.33 | Draw £38.00 | Ireland £65.00 |
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| Bet: | Returns: | England £15.00 | Draw £38.00 | Ireland £60.00 |
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| Bet: | Returns: | England £15.30 | Draw £38.00 | Ireland £65.00 |
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Former Three Lions defender Sol Campbell had warned of the dangers of racism in Poland and Ukraine prior to the tournament after being shown footage filmed by BBC's 'Panorama'.
Additionally, the families of Theo Walcott and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain refused to travel to the host nations in fear of race related attacks, but the FFU president was keen to defend Eastern European football."I want to pay attention to the fact that sometimes it happens in the country where football was born," he told Goal.com.
"In England, the national team has not brought a player [Rio Ferdinand] because of a conflict over racism.
"That is enough, [so let's] focus on the important things."
Fears peaked ahead of the tournament when several Dutch players reported racist abuse during a training session, but Surkis played down such events.
"Everybody knows that there can be individual cases in our stadiums, but I don't think that we should pay attention to these individual cases," he continued.
"We made preventative measures, and we try to fight this racism thing, but the tournament has started and I don't think that that we should talk about racism in Ukraine.
"I think that you should be sure that it's not a problem in Ukraine, because there was no case connected to racism before the tournament or during the tournament so far, and I really hope there will be no such case."
Borys Kolesnikov, the country's Deputy Prime Minister, believes that racism is not common in Ukraine, and that it is only perpetrated by "crazy people", the likes of which are found in every country.
"I want to say that in our country we had years when we were a part of the Soviet Union," he told Goal.com.
"Millions of foreigners arrived from Africa, from Latin America and other parts of the world, so not in the Soviet Union, in Ukraine. There was no racism.
"Of course, crazy people you can find in every country, but I don't think that it is common, and it is not even a system thing. I think it's just provocation to say such a word."
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German giants Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund will battle it out at Wembley for European glory. Get involved by sending us your thoughts via Twitter or Facebook! Hosted by Mark Doyle.
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