http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...sage-victims-What-said-response-followed.html Cardiff's South Korean midfielder Kim Bo-kyung and agents Carly Barnes and Phil Smith were all allegedly discussed in the text message exchange between Malky Mackay and Iain Moody. Sportsmailâs investigation into allegations of racist, sexist and homophobic texts ended on Thursday night with a public apology from Malky Mackay and the resignation of Crystal Palace sporting director Iain Moody. The text exchanges outlined in Sportsmailâs exclusive report date back to when Mackay and Moody worked as manager and head of recruitment at Cardiff City, before both were sacked by club owner Vincent Tan amid claims of over-spending in the transfer market. Tan launched a £750,000 investigation, conducted by law firm Mishcon de Reya. The series of deeply offensive text messages were discovered during a raid on Moodyâs London home in March. After a meeting his employers at Selhurst Park, Moody resigned on Thursday. Mackay issued a poorly worded statement through the League Managersâ Association. âIn the course of a search by the club in early 2014 of 10,000 private text messages sent to and from another member of staff, it emerged that Malky had, it seems, sent a couple of one-line texts that were, with the benefit of hindsight, very regrettable and disrespectful of other cultures,â said the statement. CARLY BARNES - AGENT AND LAWYER WHAT WAS SAID: âI hope sheâs looking after your needs. I bet youâd love a bounce on her falsies.â THE RESPONSE: Carly Barnes was unavailable for comment on Thursday. PHIL SMITH - AGENT WHAT WAS SAID: âGo on, fat Phil. Nothing like a Jew that sees money slipping through his fingers!!!â THE RESPONSE: âIt was unnecessary. Agents can be fair game. I understand that. But itâs offensive. In todayâs society racism is wholly unacceptable and sport should be no different. Itâs part of our society and it should set an example. âI donât know if there was any malice but people have to be more aware and more responsible. As a Jewish person - and with what is going on in Europe at the moment the Jewish community is feeling pretty vulnerable - this kind of thing doesnât help. We all support anti-racism in sport and now that I have been asked to say something Iâm going to take the opportunity. âIf you want to call me fat, I donât care. But to say itâs good to see a Jew suffer, thatâs not good. âI donât want to be judgmental because I think they have enough problems but this isnât just football - itâs real life - and there is no place for language like that.â KIM BO-KYUNG - CARDIFF CITY MIDFIELDER WHAT WAS SAID: âFkn chinkys.â âFk it. Thereâs enough dogs in Cardiff for us all to go around.â THE RESPONSE: Kim's agent Lee Yeung-Joong responded via email. 'Surely, we have checked all reports from the UK regarding the manager Mackay and his right hand man Iain Moody related with our player Kim Bo-Kyung. 'Regardless Mackay had mentioned that kind of Racist words by text, we never received any unfair treatments from him and Cardiff City football club at all. 'When Kim firstly joined Cardiff in 2012 summer, just after London Olympic, Mackay had given a lot of considerations for the player and our staffs. 'Kim couldnât understand English well at that time, and our staff could be always with the player and support him very well, at all home, away games, locker room and all of team meetings, even it was not allowed to anyone. Also, Mackay had spent a lot of times with Kim for his adaptation and match performances always. 'Mackay has very strong character, as everyone knows, and he could say worst words on the pitch, but it was just a WORD, and he always has shown warmest hearts and faith to the player and all of our agency staffs as well. 'This is all what I can tell you about this rumor.' -------- Imo this is disgusting. Even worse though is how a lot of people like the LMA & Harry Redknapp are all sticking up for him.
Redknapp probably does believe that it's banter, as it would've been seen as such when he was young. He is 67, after all. Doesn't excuse his stupid comments, of course, but it wouldn't be too surprising if he's said similar things himself, though text and email aren't exactly his style. Some aspect of self-preservation in his media interaction, in my opinion. Mackay's not a product of that era, so he doesn't have anything even remotely close to an excuse and the LMA have utterly humiliated themselves and it's members. Someone has to be held responsible for that ridiculous statement and it needs to happen now. Mackay's basically finished and they shouldn't have made any attempt to defend him, especially as it's at the expense of some of it's other members. The comment about the female agent was relatively harmless though, in my opinion. It's misogynistic and immature, but it doesn't compare with the racism on display in the others. More fuel for the fire, I suppose.
I want to how the text messages were discovered. "Raid" is media speak, but what does it mean? The law firm broke into his house? He invited them in? 10,000 text messages? We're not talking SMS here. We're talking MSN or Facebook Messenger. Company laptop. That's my guess.
This has blown out of all proportion IMHO. I don't think the LMA is defending Mackay on the basis that it's OK to be racist/sexist/homophobic. The point being made is that these were private texts, which would not have been made public unless heaven and earth had been moved to make them public. Nobody would have been offended by the content if they had remained private. I don't know if Mackay is racist/sexist/homophobic, but he, like most people, will probably say and do things in private he wouldn't dream of doing in public. When scrutinised in public, his comments might not seem like the "banter" Mackay refers to, but in the context of a private conversation with a close male associate, it's easier to accept that he was probably just being laddish for effect. Many blokes do the same in the pub with their mates. Things are said privately between them for effect, which do not necessarily reflect their views and which they would not say in public to cause offence. How many comedians make a living out of jokes at the expense of all different groups of people. They pander to stereotypes - whether it's page three girls, the Irish, Scousers, Catholics, various races.... you name it. The laugh now, in these ultra-PC times, comes from our discomfort in acknowledging that we identify with these stereotypes ourselves in our lives, but feel that we shouldn't. Try watching the re-runs of "Little Britain" on TV at the moment without feeling very uncomfortable at laughing at the characters portrayed. Characters are lampooned because of their race, sexuality, class etc etc. It's all very immature, but it's no more sinister than that. Ditto some of the silly things said by players and managers every week in front of the cameras. Ditto the silly celebrations on the pitch. Ditto the silly songs fans of all clubs sing. A storm in a teacup.
tbh... what a pair of ****s...he just gave an interview and mentioned how much pressure he was under cos of the treat of losing his job at cardiff...I have been made redundant 3 times and my other half has been made redundant once...we don't earn hundreds of thousands a year or get pay offs worth hundreds of thousands and nor do we get paid for media interviews...we have to scrimp and scrape by and pick ourselves up and get a new job...just like millions of other people in this country... and not once have I made anti jewish comments, I have never slagged off other cultures or races, made **** comments about gay men I work with or made ****ty comments about women I work with... and then the ****s call it banter...banter ain't something you do behind someones back and it don't involve slagging of a who section of the population...banter is taking the piss out of an equal to their face. **** 'em ... they have only issued a half arsed apology cos cardiff have made this public...I am glad they have both lost the palace jobs...I know we all make mistakes but calling people chinkys ain't a mistake...comments about a "jew losing money through his fingers" ain't a mistake ..it is deliberately insulting. Me calling them ignorant ****s ain't a mistake...it's an honest view on my part and I suspect the views in the emails / texts are their honest opinions...so like I said ... **** the racist ****s
Ah, let's use this to have another go at Redknapp. From my TV screen, Harry spoke extremely sensibly about the situation. For sure he called Malky a "lovely man" but he also emphasised several times that he felt Malky had made a big mistake in his alleged comments. Not at any time during the interview was 'even worse than disgusting'. I am getting really pissed off with the cheap comments about Redknapp on here.
Redknapp was hating the sin and showing compassion for the sinner. "He made a big mistake"..."I'm not condoning what he did in any way"... but "this shouldn't end his life." Nothing wrong with that. I'm personally offended by MacKay and Moody's words. But as long as everyone is clear that their comments are vile and completely unacceptable, and they make a sincere apology, they, like the rest of us who have made mistakes, deserve another chance. Finding some sort of sympathetic word for a friend or colleague who has done something wrong strikes me as showing good character on Redknapp's part.
Not necessarily a computer. If you have influence and power like Tan, a call to GCHQ (or the NSA) will reveal they have every text message he (or even yourself) ever sent if they so wished to see them. Sleep tight!
Not using it to have a go at Redknapp at all, just annoys me that Redknapp was sticking up for someone who has made homophobic, sexist and anti semitic comments.
Sorry Luke but making sexist, homophobic and anti-semtic comment is a bit more than being immature and definitely a lot more than a storm in a teacup.
Agreed! This is getting silly. It's a vendetta conducted by Tan against Mackay. I'm not claiming that he's wholly innocent, but let's have a little context here. How many of us can honestly put their hands up and say that they haven't stood in a pub with their mates and made "inappropriate" comments re girls, or whatever?
If the comments were made in public, I would agree with you. What people say privately is different. Of course nobody would condone what he said, but he never intended that anyone who might be offended would be aware of the comments. Context is important. He was being laddish and immature. It's hard to see his behaviour as worse than that, which is effectively what 'Arry was saying. Had he made these comments publicly, then you could properly level the accusation that he intended to be sexist, racist and homophobic and then the gravity of the situation would rightly escalate.
I'm a long way from being a fan of Redknapp's, but, I must say, that I don't see anything wrong with the comments he made on this subject. It's been a long while since this world went pc crazy. I'm not condoning racism or sexism, but things like this do have a tendency to expand beyond any reasonable perspective. There are children being murdered in Gazza, and that sickens me; so, please do forgive me if I refuse to get drawn into this particular non-debate.
I think that the real issue here, as in other recent examples, is: Is privately showing attitudes that are socially unacceptable a sackable offence? Now the LA Clippers guy is obviously a nasty old racist bastard. But should being a nasty old racist bastard in private mean you get fined millions of dollars, have a ban on ownership of sports teams and have your property forcibly sold from under you? With the Gray/Keys thing and their comments on the female linesman I do think there's a decent argument for sanctioning and probably sacking - their job is to analyse and comment on, among other things, the performance of the officials. Obviously they're gonna be a bit crap at their job if they think that women are fundamentally unable to call offside decisions as well as a man. With this one it looks, on the surface, like McKay is a bit, well, out of touch and getting by with a view of the world more in keeping with a 1970s sitcom. Not clearly hateful but just stupid and dealing in old, socially unacceptable stereotypes. Well - maybe a little hateful - I'd rather be a white man meeting him and applying for a job than a Jewish woman (mind you maybe in his weird world Jewish women are particularly good at the job he's interviewing for, who knows?) But to return to the point - isn't the real story here that someone searched through 10,000 of his personal texts to find something to shame him socially and thus end (possibly) his career? We live in such a cossetted, comfortable world that people throw around words like "disgusted" and "offended" so easily. Yes there are genuine problems with racism, sexism, homophobia and other forms of hatred out there. Ask anyone in Syria or a hundred other places right now. But us Westerners getting in a tiz over someone basically being nasty really does embarrass me a bit and worries me a lot when those people are sanctioned by losing their jobs, careers and property.
Just want to clarify: in my last post it sounds like I'm saying that racism/homophobia/sexism etc are only "out there" in places like Syria. Not accurate. I have lived in the UK and the USA and can confirm that there is PLENTY in those places too. I'm not saying that instances of these things are only trivial in UK/US or that racism is not institutionalized in both countries cos it is. I'm just saying that we should be careful how seriously we should take these trivial examples as opposed to, say, how cops keep shooting black guys in the US.
I think there is a careful line to draw. People I know say things in private amongst close friends that are not acceptable to say in public amongst strangers or people they don't know as well. In these cases, these are people I know well and have known for a very long time - I know that them making jokes or over-the-top comments about certain parts of society do not reflect their actual views. The comments have shock humour value and as others have said, the humour comes from saying things that ARE totally unacceptable to say in wider society. The people saying these things are not racist, or sexist, or prejudiced in the way that their comments suggest. They would be mortified if their comments made it out of the close circle of 3 or 4 friends, as the wrong impression of their views would be given and great offence could be caused. People make comments in these situations that do not represent their true views. There are people of course who make such comments and mean them, but clearly that isn't always the case. However in Malky Mackay's case - he should not be making comments in a professional environment, about people he is working with and employing, to fellow professionals in a work environment. Thats damaging to relationships in the workplace. I obviously don't know if Mackay is actually as prejudiced as his comments suggest, but I think there has to be a distinction between saying things for shock humour value in a private context where no offence will be caused and where the words will not leave the present company, and saying the same things in a context where workplace relationships can be damaged and prejudiced. Of course the danger in texting/emailing or whatever too is that electronic communication can often be leaked. If Mackay is actually a racist, sexist, anti-Semitic homophobe, then he has no place in football or society. Thats indisputable. If he is not, then his sin is making the comments in a context where there was a danger that they would get out and cause offence, as the now have, and about specific people in a workplace environment. Thats damaging and its not right. And if anyone saw the tweets from the Egyptian player he used to manage (can't remember his name now), if Mackay's comments that he described were true then that really is unacceptable.
Just wanted to compliment the quality of this thread. A lot of well thought out debate. I have mixed thoughts on the issue and other posters have summed up the issues extremely well.
I largely agree with Huddlefro's comment, but I think that the line between professional and private is probably quite hard to define in football, at times. Some people in the game really need to realise the position that they're in and the spotlight that they're under.
Agree with all the stuff in bold. As for Redknapp, he clearly regards Mackay as a friend which puts him in a difficult situation. Redknapp's not the type to stand by and let a friend get a kicking and I admire that, it's just that some of the quotes are really spurious. He might not be a murderer or a nonce or whatever else, Harry, but clearly no one's suggesting we treat him like one. No one thinks he should go to jail for 15 years for a start. Those defending Mackay(Kim appears to be too) are saying that he's a nice guy and not a racist are being far too generous. The evidence is right there in front of them that he's not a nice guy because nice guys don't smile to your face and say such disrespectful things behind your back. Racisms a more difficult thing to pin on a person though and that's why the defence always seems to be used, no one seems to agree what actually constitutes being a racist though.It's possible to use tired, old jokes with a sense of irony(references to Koreans eating dogs, the black monopoly board, Jews and money) but when you couple thst with comments about the lack of "white faces" and terms like "chinkys" getting thrown about, I really don't think the pair of them are worth trying to excuse. Private, or not, the potential future employees and co workers of these two deserved to know what kind of "banter" these two thought was acceptable.