Cats, humans and consequences

FOUL PLAY The outcry over Zuoma’s despicable animal abuse raises uncomfortable questions about why racial and sectarian abuse in soccer has not been met with similar outrage and repercussions.


The Cast Stone
Michael Gallagher

Kicking and punching any animal is utterly wrong, cowardly and despicable. This week, there has been widespread revulsion at a video of English Premier League footballer Kurt Zouma in his London home, punching and kicking his pet cat.
The public response has been swift and stern; the incident is being investigated by the authorities and his club, West Ham United, has taken strong (if somewhat delayed) action. The French international defender has been fined £250,000, one of the club’s sponsors has withdrawn from their multi-million-pound deal with West Ham, and Zouma’s personal sponsor, Adidas, has canceled its lucrative contract with him.
Kurt Zouma’s brother, Yoan, has been suspended by his club, Dagenham and Redbridge, after it emerged that it was he who filmed the sickening incident.
The incident has brought animal welfare issues to the fore throughout the British and Irish media, and the issue has been discussed at length in newspaper articles, television and radio shows, blogs, pods and millions of social media posts.
In recent days, calls have been growing for Zuoma to be sacked by West Ham. This would have huge implications for the Frenchman, who earns a basic salary of £125,000 a week in his current role there.  
As acknowledged at the start of this column – abuse of animals in utterly wrong, cowardly and despicable. However, I personally feel that calls for Zouma to lose his job are wrong, emotional and over the top.
In my view, hypocrisy is alive and well when it comes to moral outrage over incidents involving footballers in the top divisions of English soccer. In recent years, controversies around shameful racism and sectarianism have been dealt with much more leniently than Zouma’s shameful cat-kicking, and one has to ask why this is.
After the English national team lost the final of Euro 2020 in June 2021, three players Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka were met with a torrent of online racist abuse, with murals of the players later defaced with graffiti. The fact that all three were black cannot be forgotten.
Amazingly, a YouGov survey taken after the tournament revealed that only 71 percent of those questioned believed the reaction to the three footballers penalty misses was wrong. In my view, English football authorities took no concrete action in this case, apart from saying the abuse was not acceptable.
In March 2019, during a match between Montenegro and England, several English players were subjected to monkey chants. Only minimal sanctions were imposed on the host association by the authorities.
On August 8, 2019, the sister of Irish defender Cyrus Christie was hit and racially abused in the crowd when she went to watch him play for Fulham on the opening day of the league season. Irish international James McClean has been the victim of an avalanche of sectarian abuse over the past few seasons as he played for West Bromwich Albion, Stoke City and Wigan Athletic.
These are only a miniscule amount of the incidents which could be listed here – none of them have recieved anywhere near the same media interest as this week’s cat-kicking.
One of the most well-known racist incidents in English soccer involved Liverpool and Manchester United. Luis Suarez, the brilliant Liverpool striker was found to have racially abused United defender Patrice Evra. Suarez was fined £40,000 and banned for eight games. However, he did not lose his Adidas sponsorship, nor did Liverpool lose any of their main team sponsors.
Why does the cat-kicking elicit a more stringent response than racism? Maybe, it’s the physical abuse that gets more people angry; maybe it’s the cowardice exhibited or maybe some people don’t view racism in the same light as animal abuse.
Of course, we cannot pat ourselves on the back here in Ireland. We seem to be developing our own sectarian problems here in sport. Only nine days ago, Down’s hurling manager highlighted alleged sectarian abuse directed towards his players during a match in Carlow. This doesn’t come as a surprise to some of us who have covered matches involving teams from Ulster and the other three provinces over the years.
In Irish soccer a torrent of sectarian abuse was showered upon Shamrock Rovers goalkeeper Alan Manus when he didn’t didn’t change his stance and face the tricolor during national anthem before the 2020 FAI Cup final. Very little was done by the sporting authorities.
So why is there now such a huge public outcry to the kicking of a cat? Why is there more condemnation of Zouma’s actions than of players and fans abusing one another because of the colour of their skin or their religious beliefs?
Moral hypocrisy is alive and well.