Boston Red Sox owners have a big problem -- racism

Liverpool's American owner now has some big decisions to make

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By the time last Saturday's game came around, pressure was beginning to build on Dalglish but in welcoming Suarez back after his ban, he again sounded a note of defiance by saying that Suarez should never have been banned in the first place. it was perhaps at this point (way too late in the day) that John W Henry began to take a personal interest in the sorry saga.

In a sequence of clearly prearranged events prior to the kick off of last Saturday’s it was clearly understood (even by the spectators)  that Suarez would shake Patrice Evra's hand and some sort of line could be drawn under the dispute. Millions of people have now watched the moment where Patrice Evra held out his hand and Louis Suarez refused to take it.

Initially Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish once again defended Suarez and lashed the Press for creating a row out of nothing but was then obliged to issue a grovelling apology after Ian Ayre, Liverpool’s managing director, also issued a statement that condemned Suárez for misleading the club over his intentions to shake the hand of the player he racially abused at Anfield in October.
 
But this may only be the start of the problems for Dalglish and Suarez  - at some point Red Sox owners in Boston  are going to have to respond to the underlying problem because the soccer club it owns has still not issued an apology for the racial abuse of Patrice Evra. Nor has any apology been forthcoming for the oft repeated allegation that the FA stitched Liverpool up. Furthermore, no apology has been made for Liverpool’s astonishing claim that Suarez should never have been banned and no apology has been made for the booing by Liverpool fans of Evra’s every touch of the ball.
 
The Guardian reports that the banking group Standard Chartered, which pays £20m a year for having its name on the Liverpool kit made strong representations to the club after the game expressing its extreme displeasure at the way its image was being dragged through the mud. The banking group, which has a high profile in Africa and the Middle East then took the unprecedented step of issuing a public statement effectively condemning the club it sponsors:  “We were very disappointed by Saturday’s incident and have discussed our concerns with the club,”
 
John W Henry, and chairman, Tom Werner, are scheduled to visit Liverpool next week  for commercial and sponsorship reasons but it is now unthinkable that they will decline to issue a statement about the racism displayed by one of their own high profile employees and the tenacious support that was shown to that employee by a club they own.
 
Many Irish people are asking whether things would ever been allowed to go so far if a Red Sox player had behaved the same way.
 
As Marina Hyde in The Guardian wrote;
"Since the flurry of apologies to emerge from Anfield on Sunday, there have been glib observations about principal owner John W Henry being a man of principle, but he appears instead to be a man of steely commercial pragmatism. Whether his Fenway Sports Group will ape News Corp in throwing their British interests to the wolves to protect their primary US concerns remains to be seen. But if I were Kenny Dalglish, I wouldn't be planning too many moons ahead."

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