Shrewsbury under-18s player racially abused at Denmark tournament
A Shrewsbury Town under-18s footballer was racially abused by a member of the opposition when the teams met in Denmark in an international youth tournament.
The Town met Spangsbjerg IF in the Iber Cup Eric earlier this week but during the heated game, which ended in a 1-1 draw after the town failed to score a penalty, one of the academy’s players was abused by a player from the opposing team.
The altercation led to Spangsbjerg IF being removed from the tournament.
Eric Ramsay, STFC’s academy manager, said: “We were really proud of how our players conducted themselves in such an emotionally-charged situation – they showed a real togetherness, team spirit and professionalism when it would have been very easy not to."
Dan Copnall, the academy’s head of coach development, added: "The players and staff so far have been excellent in what has been a very challenging but enjoyable few days, both on and off the pitch.
"The players have shown excellent team spirit, grit and determination.
"When taking the players abroad to play football, the main aim is to expose the players to situations that they wouldn’t usually face back home, such as pressure to win, playing against different styles of play, having to to potentially play everyday and to also learn more about themselves and each other.
"All of these little experiences play a huge part in everyone's development, staff included, unfortunately, we can’t always control how the opposition play and more importantly how the opposition conduct themselves, but we can always control how we respond to these situations, and to echo Eric’s points, the players behaved extremely well to the situations that were exposed to them, and, as staff we were very proud of them."
The under-18s travelled to Denmark for the international youth tournament and, as well as facing Spangsbjerg IF and Norwegian side Vigør FK, they will play Esbjerg FB today
