Did you know that you can go on any celebrity’s Wikipedia page and write “is a massive nonce” just after their name. Of course, if it’s Jimmy Savile’s page you’d be bang on the money, but otherwise it demonstrates the perils of putting too much faith into an online encyclopedia written by the public.
Sadly, this nugget of advice was lost on officials at the Asian Football Confederation, who have been forced to apologise after referring to the UAE football team as ‘the sand monkeys’ on their official website.
The AFC got the nickname from Wikipedia but it instantly caused offence to the UAE who said the nickname was racist. “We express our strong resentment over the use of this bad description by the AFC website,” the UAE team said in a statement.
“What happened is unacceptable and shows disrespect to others. It is a proof of racist attitudes that are starting to surface.”
The UAE team prefer to be called “Al-Abyad” – which means the whites, a reference to the colour of their kit. The irony is if you were in the deep south of America dressed all in white and ran around complaining about sand monkeys, you’d be considered a racist yourself.
The UAE demanded “a quick official apology,” and were duly granted one. “The error, which was mainly because of referral to a popular web-based encyclopedia by the concerned editor, was corrected immediately after it was noticed,” the confederation said in a statement. “The AFC would like to apologise for any hurt this might have caused to the UAE Football Association and UAE football fans.”
We’re sure FIFA, with their impeccable record when it comes to dealing with racism, will fine both parties and say the incident never happened.
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