Ball in FAI’s court after Zayed racial abuse claim

HIS 12th goal of the season in earning Derry City a point from a 1-1 draw at Shamrock Rovers on Monday night should have had Eamon Zayed, currently the Airtricity League’s top scorer, in ebullient form.

But instead of leaving the Tallaght Stadium pitch reasonably happy with his 90 minutes football, Zayed went straight to match officials to complain of being racially abused by an opponent on the pitch during the game.

It wasn’t the first time in his career the 27-year-old has suffered such taunts. Last year he wrote on a website blog of the racial abuse he’d suffered in the early part of his career at Bray.

It also emerged on Monday night that Zayed had been racially abused by a section of the crowd at Richmond Park during Derry’s 1-1 draw there with St Patrick’s Athletic last Friday.

The FAI and league continue to make strident efforts to stamp out any form of racism through their “Show Racism the Red Card” campaign, which Zayed has been a part of. While it is rare, this is nonetheless the second major incident of racism in the league.

Two years ago Bohs defender Jason McGuinness received a five-match suspension from the FAI for admitting he had racially abused Sligo Rovers’ Benin international Romuald Boco.

Dublin-born Zayed, who came up through the ranks of the famous St Joseph’s Boys club in south Dublin, played underage international football for the Republic of Ireland up to U21 level, being capped 11 times in total.

He played for Ireland in the FIFA U20 World Cup in the UAE in 2003.

Though his father is Tunisian, Zayed has since become a full international for Libya, whom he qualifies to play for through his grandparents.

“He’s had to endure lot of nonsense,” said Derry City manager Stephen Kenny after the game on Monday. “A lot of stuff went on. He’s been in touch with the match observer.

“He doesn’t really want to speak about it, he’s actually quite upset. I can’t really say any more at the moment. There were one or two incidents on Friday as well,” added Kenny.

Having also reported it to the PFAI (players’ union), Zayed was still not prepared to comment publicly on the issue yesterday.

“To be honest with you, I hadn’t encountered that before really — maybe years ago with Eric Levine, he got a little bit when we were at Longford,” continued a perplexed Kenny.

“But, generally I’ve never encountered anything like that before. We’ll wait and see. We have got to deal with it as a club.”

Writing in the aforementioned blog in March last year Zayed, recalled his experience of racial abuse earlier in his career.

“I was still on the ground feeling the effects of the tackle when the player leaned over and said: ‘Get up you black b*****d’,’’ Zayed wrote.

“I jumped straight up off the ground, in complete shock and amazement and confronted him and asked him to repeat what he had just said. He simply replied without hesitation, “you heard me, you black b*****d’’.

“I couldn’t believe it. It was cowardly, spineless and simply racist. My manager at the time heard what had happened after the game and asked me if I wanted to make a complaint. I thought that it was best not to make a huge uproar about it as I was still young and unestablished within the league.

“There have been other racist remarks that I have received from opposition fans. I remember being called a Muslim so-and-so because of my connection with Tunisia. In another game, I was called a ‘shoe-bomber’ — again because of my Arabic roots.

“I have to be honest though, fortunately, I haven’t received too many racist remarks in my time playing League of Ireland football.’’

How the FAI and league now handle the issue is the question. Unlike the McGuinness case, the Shamrock Rovers player accused of the abuse on Monday night has denied the claim.