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Boateng walked off the pitch during a friendly match against Pro Patria, a fourth division side, in the town of Busto Arsizio, in January 2013, after he was racially abused by the fans there.
Although Boateng was appointed as the first person, by Sepp Blatter, to be a member of the task force, in a high-profile ceremony, the fact that he never attended any of our meetings was an irony not lost on me.
That we were having discussions about racism without the consistent presence of active players, was, to put it very diplomatically, particularly odd.
Serey Die, the Cote d’Ivoire midfielder, who plays for FC Basel in Switzerland, attended our very first meeting and was never seen again. Jozy Altidore, the USA international, also co-opted as a member of the Task Force, did not attend any meeting either. Yaya Toure, the Manchester City midfielder, also co-opted onto the Task Force, found it impossible to attend meetings but was involved in other task force activities.
That meetings were scheduled to take place at times that players would not be released by their clubs to travel to Zurich did not help matters. Being a governing body for the sport, well aware of players’ work schedules, it was odd that they did not think of this important point.
There was, in the main, a general consensus that only a two-pronged approach – stiff sanctions for racist behaviour, as well as a programme of education for the global fraternity, to change ignorant attitudes and the mind-sets of those with prejudice, was the way to go.
I did warn the group, not once, that there were several national associations, particularly in Europe, where it was evident that they lacked the internal capacity to deal with the problem of racism and required direct intervention from FIFA – and the credible threat of sanctions – to ensure that they actually did something about it.
After our first meeting in May 2013, we had a second meeting on September 12th, four months later.
Russia – and how it was going to confront the problems of racism within the game, ahead of the 2018 World Cup finals, was a major topic for discussion in the Task Force.
Jerome Valcke, the disgraced former FIFA Secretary-General, may have lost all credibility, as the result of the 12-year ban imposed on him, for six violations of its Code of Ethics, by the governing body’s Judicial Chamber.
But since the old saying goes that ‘even the devil deserves his due’, I have to make clear that he made poignant observations that we, as a Task Force, had a huge responsibility to dialogue with the Russians and come up with a credible plan to improve the state of things there, which had been clearly exposed in a study done by Football Against Racism in Europe (FARE), in association with the SOVA Centre in Moscow.
During the 2014/2015 season, they logged 92 incidents of discriminatory displays and chants by Russian fans in and around the stadium, against a total of 83 for the previous two seasons put together.
And, as far back as 2008, Andre Bikey, the former Cameroon international, admitted to the London Daily Telegraph that he carried a firearm, for personal protection from violent racists, while he was playing for Lokomotiv Moscow.
“Russia has a different mentality. For a black person, it is very hard to live in Russia… I’m a big guy and maybe you think you can fight people off, when there is one, two or three people trying to attack you. But when it is six or seven, you cannot do this. This is why I had to buy a gun,” he told the paper.
“When I moved to [English club] Reading, I gave it (the gun) to one of my friends in Moscow. There are things I want to forget, about my time in Russia.
“You would go onto the pitch and as soon as the game starts, you would begin to hear the fans saying bad things. It was not easy to hear those things. The police did not protect us,” Bikey said.
The harrowing tale of Bikey – and other players like him – fuelled my personal determination – and certainly that of other members, like Tokyo Sexwale and Piara Powar, that we, as a Task Force, needed to do something serious and sustainable, about bringing this horrible problem to an end – or at least, reducing it.
But after our second meeting, ominous signs began to show that the work of our group was not being taken seriously by certain members of the FIFA administration.
After the meeting of 12th September 2013, there was no single meeting of the Task Force for over one year – 15 months to be exact.
It was a pathetic and extremely disappointing state of affairs that certainly sowed the seeds of despondence in my spirit. I – and, as far as I know, other members too – did not receive any meaningful communication from FIFA, on why no meetings were called.
Jeff Webb, then CONCACAF president and the chairman of our Task Force, before his arrest and subsequent conviction by the US justice system, publicly said as much, at an embarrassing press conference in Rio de Janeiro, during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, to mark its Anti-Racism/Discrimination Day.
Eleven months into the 15-month interregnum – and after I had consulted with other concerned members of the Task Force – I decided to write Sepp Blatter, Jerome Valcke and every member of the Task Force, about the “unenviable, if not embarrassing position” we found ourselves in.
“Considering the scope and seriousness of the work the Task Force was given to carry out, I am very surprised, to say the least, that we find ourselves in this unpleasant situation, where our work has, for all intents and purposes, come to a perplexing halt,” I told them on 7th August 2014.
“The watching world will judge the Task Force’s members and FIFA very harshly, if they come to the conclusion that the Task Force did nothing concrete about the problem of racism in the game. For now, the jury is still out on us,” I warned them.
I never got a reply to this letter, from any member of the FIFA administration, right up to the moment that the third – and very last meeting of the Task Force took place, on the 2nd of December 2014.
Illness made it impossible for me, at the very last moment, to attend that meeting, the last chaired by Webb, before his tales of woe and subsequent disgrace began.
But the suggestion, at that 2nd December meeting, that the Task Force should have had its fourth session in Russia, in order to have meaningful dialogue with that country’s football federation, as well as its World Cup Local Organising Committee (LOC), never saw the light of day.
Webb’s subsequent arrest at the Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich, on 27th May 2015, after the Swiss authorities acted on a US arrest warrant, in which other members of the FIFA executive committee (as it was then known) were arrested and subsequently extradited to the United States for trial, brought a rude, dramatic and certainly unexpected end to his chairmanship of the Task Force.
DR Congo’s Constant Omari, president of his country’s football association and a member of the FIFA Council, was appointed as Webb’s replacement in September 2015.
But not a single meeting was held under Omari’s chairmanship until the Task Force was dissolved.
My email to Omari, on 26th August 2016, asking him why no meeting had been called never got an answer. It was only when I saw him, at a CAF media breakfast meeting, on the 4th of February, at the Radisson Hotel in Libreville, Gabon, during the recently concluded Africa Cup of Nations, that he finally gave me an answer.
“There was no direction from the FIFA administration on the entire issue, so I was in no position to say anything to you,” he said. It was an excuse that I found untenable, as he could have certainly explained this to me in confidence, as a member of the Task Force.
From the time I was appointed to the Task Force, on the 29th of April 2013, until its dissolution on 23rd September 2016, I only made one public statement – to the BBC World Service’s ‘World Football’ programme, on the workings, activities and frustrations of being a part of a Task Force that was clearly not working properly. (I must state that I am a longstanding reporter and pundit for this programme).
And that was only after my conversation with Infantino and Samoura. That, for anyone who knows me and my very robust style of journalism, is a show of unusual restraint.
During my 41-month stint, I received several requests, from CNN, the BBC and several media organisations around the world, to comment on the work we were doing.
But I refused to do so, because it would not have promoted the required atmosphere and ambience for Task Force members to have brutally frank and robust dialogue during our meetings, if they were afraid that their comments could end up on the pages of newspapers.
The time for silence has since ended.
I am extremely concerned with the attitude of the current FIFA administration and they need to be told the unvarnished truth – the disbandment of the Task Force is a grave mistake. And not allowing it to have taken on the task of dealing with Russia, ahead of the World Cup, was also a faux pas.
That FIFA does not have a concrete plan to deal with errant member associations, where racism is endemic, is