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Ajax Fined For Anti Modern Football Banners


villaajax

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Which is precisely what they have been doing to other teams in the Dutch league for years.

While that is true and I see your point playing devils advocate for a moment...

Would you put Arsenal in a bracket with Chelsea and Man City? I personally wouldn't because of they way they are run, develop their own young players, run within their means rather than from a cheque book etc.

I'd draw similarities between Arsenal and Ajax in terms of how they've been run, how they've put their money into their structure rather than stars in order to help them continue to grow their income and compete with their richer rivals. And yes, Arsenal like Ajax pinch peoples best young players when they get the chance. But all clubs do that, us included.

Ajax might be the richest club in Holland but its a position they have earned, much the same way as Man United have done here. I don't personally think they can be accused of hypocrisy when they protest about the likes of Chelsea and Man City for that reason.

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Besides which how was the banner sterotyping? I'm not sure the Ajax fans think all Arabs are billionaires.

Just that they think Arab billionaires shouldn't own football clubs presumably?

They didn't have a similar protest when the very wealthy Real Madrid came to town. I wonder why?

Edited by LondonLax
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Because it's okay for the Spanish state to essentially sponsor a club I guess. Or it's okay if they have been doing it for so long that most people cant remember the club when they were skint. I'm sure there is now a generation of fans who can only ever remember Chelsea as being an impossibly rich club so accept that as part of the status quo.

Like I said earlier, football has always been about the big guy shitting on the little guy, us taking a manager off of Norwich is no different really to Liverpool taking Suarez off of Ajax, Ajax taking Christian Eriksen off of Odense or Manchester City taking everybody off of everybody. It's just that the clubs who are used to being the ones who benefit from such deals scream and shout very loudly when they are on the wrong end of one. Just look at how Liverpool initially reacted to Torres leaving.

Edited by The_Rev
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Just that they think Arab billionaires shouldn't own football clubs presumably?

They didn't have a similar protest when the very wealthy Real Madrid came to town. I wonder why?

Even if they did and there is no evidence that they think that or even anything to suggest it might be the case, that wouldn't be stereotyping.

Perhaps because Real Madrid aren't the sort of newly rich club they were protesting about.

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I'm slightly confused how you have assumed that is what he is saying in that quote.

Besides which how was the banner sterotyping? I'm not sure the Ajax fans think all Arabs are billionaires.

 

What is he asking about then? I wrote earlier that stereotyping is not okay, so yeah, I think my assumption was spot on.

 

 

Even if they did and there is no evidence that they think that or even anything to suggest it might be the case, that wouldn't be stereotyping.

Perhaps because Real Madrid aren't the sort of newly rich club they were protesting about.

 

Maybe I am mistaken, but I have never seen the owners and directors of Manchester City attend a game wearing "sheik" clothes. I don't know if the banner looked like one of them. It was just a stereotypical drawing of an Arab. It shouldn't be this hard to understand stereotyping, and this is not meant against you.

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Ajax have done things the correct way for a long time though. Yes, the still have a bit more power and money than some clubs, but a majority of their players have come through a frankly fantastic youth system and all have been lured away from the club by money and bigger dreams from better clubs, etc etc..

 

Yes, it's naive to want a return to football where you can only use homegrown players, but of all the clubs to protest against this sort of thing, I'd say Ajax have the most right out of most clubs I can think of. They invested heavily in youth system at a time when youth systems were used to produce the best players, and now that youth system has become nothing but a moneyfarm which the fans see no real benefit from.

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Do you feel that they should've been fined if it was a picture of a fat Texan with a cowboy hat on?

No. But they should just have done a banner with Dollar/Euro/Pound/(Whatever) signs, to avoid the racist stereotyping.

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Maybe I am mistaken, but I have never seen the owners and directors of Manchester City attend a game wearing "sheik" clothes. I don't know if the banner looked like one of them. It was just a stereotypical drawing of an Arab. It shouldn't be this hard to understand stereotyping, and this is not meant against you.

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I don't think it really matters if this is the only occasion he attended a game dressed in this way, it may well be, I have no idea. However I think it is a fairly reasonable think to depict a Sheik in traditional clothing given that it is a) traditional and B) what they very frequently seem to wear.

 

I'm struggling to see what issue there is to take with it, so are you saying a picture of an Aborginal person should be done with them wearing a suit and tie so as to avoid sterotyping? That a picture of a London banker should be done in flip flops and boardie shorts to avoid sterotyping?

How far would you like to go with this?

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When you are holding up giant coordinated banners telling them to "**** Off" etc whilst drawing a stereotypical image of an Arab with a cross through it then you are getting into dodgy territory and I can see why UEFA had decided it went too far.

Like mjmooney said, if they had put a £ or € sign with a cross though it it would have all been above board.

It is all about where you draw the line and I agree with UEFA on this one.

Edited by LondonLax
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Someone should make a banner or flag saying "GENERIC NEGATIVE STATEMENT" and see if it gets banned. That's where we're going. Other than a very tenuous (and legally non-existent) racial slur that might be inferred from the Ajax fans' protest of Man City's ownership, all they are basically saying is that they don't like the influx of money into football. If we've got to the point where you can't complain about money without being censured by the people who eventually benefit from that money then you are completely ****. One of my favourite quotes seems quite apt at this time - "If you want to know where the power lies, then ask whom you cannot criticise."

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How do you think we have not come to that, when that exact thing has just happened? That seems like textbook cognitive dissonance to me. Staring at something while insisting that it does not exist.

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How do you think we have not come to that, when that exact thing has just happened? That seems like textbook cognitive dissonance to me. Staring at something while insisting that it does not exist.

Because we disagree that that was the reason for the fine (as do a number of people in this thread).

If the Ajax fans had not brought the race of the owner into it and had just been protesting the money aspect and received a fine for that then you would be right.

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You'd be right if the fine was actually for racism. But it wasn't. It was for the wonderfully umbrella and woolly crime of "displaying a provocative and inappropriate banner". Now we can argue all day about what the specifics of that mean in this case without ever coming to a definitive conclusion. But the actual precedent that has been established here is that you can now be fined for displaying a "provocative and inappropriate banner". I'll leave you to think about the scope of what falls into that category. Then go back to my quote above.

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That is not a new precedent, you could always be fined for inappropriate banners. It was only one banner that received a fine and we are still unclear on which one it was.

It may well have been the 10m long banner saying "**** You" which UEFA considered inappropriate. That would also seem a reasonable judgement for them to come to.

There is not enough evidence for me to jump to the conspiracy theory of UEFA trying to silence criticism just yet.

Edited by LondonLax
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Funny that they haven't specified which one was deemed inappropriate. You'd think that to avoid criticism (given the current climate) they'd specify it was "the racist one". Perhaps it's convenient to fine the critical one, or stamp out dissent, under the guise of there being a tenuously racist one nearby?

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