ZURICH: Sepp Blatter has reiterated his belief that a points deduction may be the most effective sanction against national teams and/or clubs whose fans are guilty of racist abuse writes KEIR RADNEDGE.

FIFA’s president emitted two Tweets today, in the wake of similar remarks at a press conference in St Petersburg, firming up comments he made earlier in the week.

In St Petersburg Blatter also repeated his opposition to supra-national leagues. This has been an issue recently in Russia and its neighbours after talk – in Ukraine in particular – of recreating a modern equivalent of the old Soviet Supreme Leaue.

As for racism, today the the head of the world football federation tweeted: “Sanctions against discriminatory acts must be very severe. We will discuss this at [the] next Strategic Committee in three weeks.” He added: “Deduction of points/team relegation. Financial sanctions: not efficient. Matches behind closed-doors:  not good solution,” tweeted the head of the world football federation.”

Blatter has faced repeated questioning on discrimination issues amid continuing controversy over the incident in which Milan walked out of a friendly match in Italy in protest at racist abuse.

Earlier last week he said: “We can never do enough to eradicate all the evils in football . . . Racism and discrimination particularly, how can you eradicate that? It’s very difficult.

“You have seen two cases last autumn: after one friendly match and one FIFA competitive match our disciplinary committee has given [both the Bulgarian and Hungarian federations] a sentence to play without spectators.

“This is one of the solutions. A more radical solution would be the deduction of points. This will have a better impact than any other sanction. To have a match played without spectators is a warning for all the spectators.”

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