LONDON, (Reuters) – England defender Danny Rose has had enough of racism in the game and said he cannot wait to get out of football amid frustration over the response of the authorities to the abuse.
Tottenham Hotspur full back Rose was among the players who were victims of offensive chanting when they played for England in Montenegro last month in a Euro 2020 qualifier.
“I’ve had enough,” Rose, 28, was quoted as saying by The Guardian yesterday.
“At the minute, how I programme myself is that I just think: ‘I’ve got five or six more years left in football and I just can’t wait to see the back of it’.
“Seeing how things are done in the game at the minute, I just want to get out of it.”
Rose feels not enough action is being taken and the disparity in the punishment highlights its ineffectiveness.
“Obviously, it is a bit sad (to feel like this) but when countries only get fined what I’d probably spend on a night out in London, what do you expect?” he added.
“You see my manager get banned for two games for just being confrontational against Mike Dean,” he said of Spurs manager Mauricio Pochettino’s two-match touchline ban for confronting the referee at the end of a 2-1 defeat at Burnley in February.
“But yet a country can only get fined a little bit of money for being racist. It’s just a bit of a farce at the minute. So that’s where we are at in football and until there’s a harsh punishment, there’s not much else we can expect.”
Rose said he had expected the racist abuse dished out to him and his England team mates Raheem Sterling and Callum Hudson-Odoi during the match against Montenegro in Podgorica.
“I played in Serbia about eight years ago and it happened there. So I sort of thought it would be a possibility that it might happen again and it did.
“I looked up straight away in the first half and I know the exact time it happened in the first half.
“But it didn’t affect my game. I’m a big boy now and I know that three points are obviously not the most important thing when you’re going through something like that, but I just wanted the team to get three points so that we could move on and get out of Montenegro as quickly as possible,” Rose said.
England are top of 2020 European Championship qualifying Group A with a maximum six points after their 5-1 win in Montenegro and a 5-0 home victory over the Czech Republic.