Crawley Town ex-manager suspended for 15 months due to racist behavior toward players

John Yems, a former Crawley Town FC manager, has been expelled from English soccer until June 2024 due to his racist behaviour.

Yems was expelled by an independent panel earlier this month for allegedly committing at least a dozen racist acts towards the players he coached. The investigation into Yems’ conduct began in May after he was suspended in late April following “serious and credible” accusations of racist behavior.

Shortly after another investigation began by the English players’ association when numerous Crawley Town players came forward with allegations against Yems, the fourth-tier club parted ways with him on May 6.

Yems was found guilty on Jan. 6, and the English Football Association released the following day a detailed list of the charges against him this week. This document describes a variety of instances in which racism has been committed against players from different backgrounds and nationalities.

These are just a few examples of Islamophobia or racism

Yems had been the manager of Crawley Town since 2019 and the document said that much of Yems’ documented racist behavior came after the cancellation of the end of the 2019-20 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yems was charged with 16 incidents of racist behavior. One of the 16 allegations was admitted by Yems, while the other 15 were denied. The panel found that 11 out of 15 allegations he denies were credible.

The first documented instance of Yems’ behavior is from a Nigerian player. The player said Yems would ask him if he would eat “jerk chicken” in an apparent assumption that the player was of Caribbean descent. The player also recalled an instance “when he was playing darts in the canteen with Player 2, another Black player, when Mr. Yems asked what they were doing playing darts when people like them normally blow sharp objects through their mouths” before making a reference to Zulu warriors.

The same player also said that Yems would mispronounce Arnold Schwarzenegger’s last name to make it sound like a racial slur. A second Black player claimed that Yems would inquire about jerk-chicken to him.

Yems would also refer to a player of Asian descent as a “curry muncher” and mock him about eating curry. Another player detailed the half-Indian and half-Irish player mocked for his ethnicity and “on one occasion when the players were eating pizzas from a sponsor Domino’s Pizzas, Mr. Yems asked him if he was upset there was no curry pizza.”

An Iraqi Muslim who played for Yems said that Yems would joke about him being a “terrorist.” Per the report, he said Yems would ask “if he slept with an AK47, and told that he could not have a GPS vest ‘because you people blow up stuff in vests.’” The player said that Yems would also repeatedly ask if he carried a bomb in his bag.

Why wasn’t Yems’ ban longer?

The length of Yems’ ban from coaching soccer was immediately a source of scrutiny Because of the language used for justification. Even the FA stated that it was not satisfied with the ban’s length.

The independent panel said that Yems didn’t get a longer suspension because it was “confident that Mr. Yems as a person is not a racist” and that he didn’t “ever intend to make racist remarks.” It also describes him as a man who is “of jocular disposition” and out of touch with current times while he likely “gave no thought at all to the effect of his language on those at whom the ‘jokes’ were aimed.”

“Mr. Yems is a man of jocular disposition,” the panel wrote. “His aim is to encourage bonding among players by cracking jokes and joining in fun with them. He was always looking for a joke from others, no matter what the impact of his words on them. Secondly, Mr. Yems describes himself as ‘old school’ and someone who is not concerned with the niceties of political correctness. It is fair to say that he has no appreciation that much of the sort of language which might have been in common usage some 40 or 50 years ago has no place in modern society.”

Wednesday’s FA statement stated that it did not agree with Yems’ decision to ban Yems for six months and had asked for a longer ban. Kick It Out, an antiracism group, also strongly protested the short-term ban.

“The behavior outlined in the report must be called out for exactly what it is; racism and Islamophobia,” Kick It Out said in a statement. “To speak plainly, a 15-month ban given the severity of the 11 proven charges is a slap int he face to the victims of the discriminatory abuse detailed in this report and anyone who has been subject to racism or Islamophobia.”