Why the FA should take no satisfaction in their handling of Leeds United goalkeeper Kiko Casilla's racism case - Daniel Chapman

The Football Association’s disciplinary procedures are well equipped to deal swiftly with the dozens of cases put before them every week, from every level of the sport.

A reckless tackle on Sunday brings a ban by Friday. Abuse a referee one weekend, sit out the next. Place a bet and you’ll be banned, with details of your losses totted up in public, in urgent protection of the beautiful, betting-sponsored game.

But when the stakes are higher, with implications for society and not just football, The FA’s procedures become less effective, to the point of doing the harm that they’re trying to prevent.

The FA have taken Jonathan Leko’s allegation that he was racially abused by Kiko Casilla during the Charlton vs Leeds game in September seriously, as they should.

Unfortunately, The FA’s definition of serious means slow, and oblivious, ignoring the impact their laborious process has in the world beyond their office walls.

The point of a mechanism for players to report racism is to eradicate it from football. But, if the result is to increase abuse towards the claimant, while reinforcing entrenched views, then something is wrong with the mechanism.

Friday night’s announcement that Casilla was banned after ‘a breach of FA Rule E3(2) was found proven’, on the balance of probability as in any other civil case, did nothing to help stop racism in football.

In the John Terry and Luis Suarez case, the report containing the evidence, argument and decision ran to more than 100 pages. At the time of writing this – Monday morning – not one word of the report on Casilla has been made public.

That caused the absurd spectacle at Hull on Saturday, where players from both teams warmed up in t-shirts supporting the Kick It Out campaign, and the away end chanted its support for a player banned for racist abuse.

Perhaps if the report, or even a summary, had been published alongside the announcement of the ban, Leeds fans would have thought twice about that.

But, without sight of the evidence, what are any of us supposed to think?

Society has got into a habit of demanding opinions without giving information first, a hamster wheel of elections, referendums and online polls that few of us are informed enough to answer.

Twitter’s and Facebook’s business models are based on extracting thoughts they can sell to advertisers and, if we don’t have any, they’ll bombard us with aggravating headlines until, like Pavlov’s dogs, we’re trained to drool on command. Then press ‘post’.

The online whirlpool of opinions without information has sucked us all into toxic waters.

The best idea I can think of to support a ‘Be Kind’ campaign is not blasé repetition of a hashtag, but reintroducing useful information to conversation. If we know more about each other, we might speak more kindly.

Part of The FA’s rationale for proceeding slowly with allegations of racism is that reputations are at stake, so they have to ensure their judgement is sound.

But, by not taking the time to release their detailed reasoning alongside the ban, they abandoned both Kiko Casilla and Jonathan Leko’s reputations to the echo chamber. In the absence of published evidence, assumption and prejudice have taken over, much of it to be found by searching for Leko’s name online.

The FA’s disciplinary process might promise a player that their allegations will be taken seriously. But, if that also guarantees the level of online abuse Leko has endured since, how many players will bother to complain in future?

Casilla’s statement on Friday night spoke of his difficulties in the last five months, and Leko would no doubt say the same. There must be a balance between acting seriously, and acting quickly enough that investigations do not become painfully arduous and self-defeating for all involved.

There’s also a performative aspect to The FA’s serious intentions that disguises their larger failure to deal with racism in football. The high profile given by their procedures to single incidents of racism create the idea that prejudice can be stamped out case by case.

But I’m yet to see a rationale for how fining an individual player six times as much as Millwall Football Club were fined for racist chanting in their stadium during a televised FA Cup match last season helps the cause of equality of football.

These feel like the decisions of an authority that has not organised its thinking.

And I’m yet to see the painstaking investigation into what one footballer said to another during a match at The Valley repeated with equal vigour into the attitudes that prevent more BAME coaches from working in professional football, or the same energy channelled into high-level support for players like Raheem Sterling when they call out racially biased press coverage.

Words spoken by Kiko Casilla have one impact; the silent prejudices that reinforce football’s power structures have another.

The FA should take no satisfaction from their handling of Casilla’s case if, even in arriving at the right result, they reinforce the barriers they’re supposed to be bringing down.