Trent says ‘every team should be punished’ if fans racially abuse players, amid Lukaku incident

Young Liverpool defender Trent Alexander-Arnold believes there isn’t enough punishment being dished out for racist abuse, amid the incident between supporters inside Cagliari’s stadium and Romelu Lukaku.

Football fans inside the stadium aimed abuse at the Inter forward, but the Italian FA said that Cagliari will not be punished as there wasn’t enough evidence of racial discrimination.

It’s a farce – in the same report, they announced that Cagliari would however be fined for being unable to control fans throwing bottles onto the pitch.

BREAKING: Serie A have confirmed once again that Cagliari will not face punishment for the racist chanting aimed at Inter's Romelu Lukaku pic.twitter.com/pgzv6ltbsb

— Andrew Cesare (@AndrewCesare) September 17, 2019

If you’d like to read more about the issue of racism in Italian football, I’d recommend taking a look at this – a lengthy piece I wrote on the matter.

Back to Trent – the 20-year-old has called for authorities to clamp down on racists. “Obviously I think the Italian FA had their reasons for not punishing [Cagliari] but I think every team should be punished,” he told Sky Sports.

“Every team’s fans should be punished for those sorts of actions. It shouldn’t be happening in the game, nowadays especially. I think it’s disappointing to see that.”

It wasn’t alright then, and it isn’t alright now, but it’s a crying shame that a lad born in 1998 is talking about racism in 2019 – the Italian FA should be ashamed of themselves. UEFA need to take a stand.