Ban Atkinson from all clubs - TUC chief

A senior British union leader today called for disgraced soccer pundit Ron Atkinson to be banned for life from visiting premiership clubs.

TUC president Roger Lyons said the campaign to keep hatred off the football terraces had been put back 10 years because of the comments made about Chelsea defender Marcel Desailly.

Mr Lyons, joint general secretary of Amicus, was telling the TUC Black Workers Conference in Torquay: “This is a man who made his name from playing black footballers in the first team. He has now been exposed as a user and a racist of the worst kind.

“One would be tempted to call him Alf Garnett Atkinson except this isn’t funny. Bigotry in football is invidious and now senior figures and broadcasters have been exposed as paying lip service to anti-racism while at the same time putting up with racist slurs in the studio.”