makes an ass out of u and me..
I'm not what you would call confrontational, especially over the internet. That's not to say I don't get irate, it's so easy to on the internet with social media being as it is. Today I happened upon a youtube blog that got picked up in one of my tumblr tracked tags, a blog regarding the recent Liverpool v Manchester United game. More specifically, the accusation by Evra that Suarez used racist language towards him multiple times throughout the match. Quickly after these claims became public, someone involved with the Liverpool website claimed that Evra has a history of accusing people, falsely, of racism. This blog repeated such claims as have countless people over the internet, either by retweets or on forums. All these people are wrong.
I was surprised by the accusations and when I first saw the tweet claiming Evra had accused players before I, while a little doubtfully, believed those to be true even though I myself could not remember such claims. It's so easy to believe what you read on the internet. It wasn't until I read into it a bit more that I was reminded of these cases, one involved a deaf fan claiming he lip read racial abuse and the other being United staff making the claims. In both cases, Evra denied hearing any such abuse. The person who insinuated Evra was a liar backtracked and admitted what he said wasn't true but the information obviously hasn't filtered through to all. It's damaging to put such information out there without even the basic fact checking especially when the two teams involved have such a fierce rivalry.
Team allegiance shouldn't come into this really. It shouldn't matter what badge is on their chest, the claims need to be investigated. I do, personally, feel it's going to be tough to prove either way. Even though there are a lot of cameras at the ground, they can't pick up what players say to each other in close proximity. I've seen people calling for action to be taken against Evra should his accusations not be proven which is as infuriating a claim as those saying he's played the race card before. A lack of proof does not mean an incident has not occurred, it's just that..a lack of proof. It will probably come down to their word. It's not an easy situation and one that will probably end with assumptions being made about both players for a long time to come.
[ I did comment on the youtube blog correcting her information as I felt it needed to be said and she replied admitting her mistake and apologised quite formally. Someone being wrong on the internet sometimes has a peaceful resolution.]