[Anderson:] You're watching Connect the world live from London. I'm Becky Anderson. Welcome back. Now Manchester City's star Yaya Toure has called on UEFA to take action on racism. The Ivory Coast international says he suffered racist abuse from Russian fans at a game in Moscow on Wednesday night. He says he heard racist chants and monkey noises from the home fans. The Moscow club, CSKA challenges his claims. I'm joined by Alex Thomas who has been following this story. He's with me now in the studio. What are the details on this at this point? I know there's some claims and counterclaims going on here, aren't there?
[Alex Thomas, Cnn Sports Correspondent:] Yeah, and the first thing coming from the player himself, Yaya Toure, who really has turned into one of the biggest names in the sport. Used to play for Barcelona. Went to Manchester City. Helped them win England's world famous Premier League. African footballer. And he said he can hear monkey noises coming from the CSKA Moscow fans, or certainly a section of them. And Manchester City have lodged a former complaint with UEFA. And since then, Europe's governing body for football has launched a disciplinary proceedings against CSKA Moscow. But as you quite rightly said, Becky, they have staunchly said that they didn't hear the racist chanting that Yaya claimed to hear. And he's calling for some very severe punishments. He's just capturing that mood of anger amongst certain black footballers in the game right now who are saying enough of words, let's hear action. And this is what Yaya Toure had to say after the game.
[Yaya Toure, Manchester United Midfielder:] I hope that we change it. I hope that we get big sunshine, you know, because you have to ban them some stadium or ban some club for a couple of years. I don't know. You have to do something about it. I always will continue with that.
[Thomas:] Talking about a ban for a couple of years, Becky. As I said, all the reports in this morning's British press, particularly we're talking about how angry he was, although he seemed pretty calm in that interview with Manchester City there in-house television station. And CSKA Moscow since then have responded as the day has gone on saying one of the two UEFA officials that give a report into their superiors at European governing body headquarters didn't hear any racist chanting. And part of a club statement read this let's take a look at this now...
[Anderson:] We don't have that, I think.
[Thomas:] No? OK. He was they were basically making the point that they don't understand why Yaya Toure made these claims, because they couldn't here anything. And if you look at their record although other Russian clubs have a poor record of this sort of thing, their record is very good. There have never been any formal complaints of racism.
[Anderson:] It's a story, of course, that we are unfortunately all too familiar with. I don't have to remind you, but perhaps let's remind our viewers, that racism in footblal has hit the headlines a lot lately. Back in 2011, English Premier League players Luis Suarez and John Terry both accused of racist abuse towards other players. Both got match bans and heavy fines, of course. And although Terry was later cleared of any criminal charges. European championships in Ukraine, Poland 2012 disrupted by several incidents of crowd trouble and racism. Russian and Spain fined after abuse from their supporters. Fast forward to January this year and A.C. Milan's Kevin Prince Boateng walked off the pitch taking his whole team with him after hearing racist chants from the crowd. You rightly point out that this is not the first time that we have heard accusations about Russian fans using racist chanting. So, what are UEFA and FIFA going to do about this, because at this point, it's sort of all in flux isn't it? Yeah. And of all those incidents, the real line in the sand was Kevin Prince Boateng walking off during a friendly game for Milan, but booting the ball into the stands and saying enough is enough. And that what was really sparked probably FIFA's biggest step. And when he world governing body gets criticized a lot, one thing we can applaud them for is their setting up of the anti-racism task force, which is headed up by Jeffrey Webb who is the president for the CONCACAF region in the Caribbean, North American soccer. And they've laid out some very stringent measures that they want to hold the world governing body to. But, still it's taken awhile to really put those measures in place. The reason being, they want all the confederations below
[Fifa:] the UEFA's the CONCACAFs, the South American regions, Asia, Africa all to be singing from the same hymn sheet so that sanctions are the same across the board. In the meantime, racism still happens. A black fooballer is saying, hey we know you're trying to take this seriously, but it's still words, it still looks good on paper. The referee last night, for example, could have stopped the game and he didn't.
[Anderson:] How do UEFA, or perhaps we should talk about how we would sort of respond to this, you get someone like Luis Suarez who says, look, in South America where I come from the common [inaudible] would not be considered racist, but it is apparently racist when he says what he said here. How are FIFA going to work out a sort of one-size fits all racism policy? That's going to be tough.
[Thomas:] Yeah. And in some places difficult as we've seen in the case in Italy recently where very traditional regional banter, if you like, for example taking the [inaudible] the Neapolitans, as the Inter Milan fans did recently suddenly had Serie A club owners up in arms that the sanctions were too tough, that that's not racism, it's something else. And there are so many subtle levels of discrimination, but I think just I think FIFA can keep it simple by just saying this old fashioned racism, bananas on the pitch, monkey noises, those are clear to hear and you can say that it wrong and sanctions have to be imposed. And I guess the one concern is are fans doing in on purpose pretending masquerading as fans of a club or a country to get them banned. But I think that's the kind of medicine they're going to have to take just in order to stamp this out, because it's been sort of bubbling up for ages and it's enough Is enough.
[Anderson:] 2013.
[Thomas:] Exactly.
[Anderson:] Enough already. Thank you. Alex Thomas with us tonight. The latest world news headlines, as you would expect here at the bottom of the hour on CNN. Plus, authorities could be closer to solving the mysterious case of Maria. This woman says she may be the mother of the little blonde girl discovered in a Greek Roma camp. More on her story is ahead. And wiretapping, computer hacking, what's next? Well, we'll show you how to become a secret agent in this age of digital espionage. And ever wondered what goes on behind palace walls? Well, feed your imagination with some very unofficial and fictional family photos of the new Prince George. All in good fun, of course.