West Ham are investigating reports of Islamophobic abuse at the London Stadium after amateur footage emerged of a crowd member appearing to hurl racist at Mohamed Salah when the Hammers hosted Liverpool in the Premier League on Monday night.
The Liverpool fan named as 22-year-old Sádat Yazdani who was in the West Ham end block 154 posted the video of the alleged abuse on social media saying that: ‘I was disgusted by what I was hearing. People like this deserve no place in our society let alone football matches.’
Speaking to Liverpool Echo Yazdani said: “I’m a Liverpool fan. I live in London. I had to sit in the home end. I’ve never been to Anfield. It’s quite saddening to hear something like that – but also I wasn’t surprised quite frankly, because it’s very common in football. It’s much, much more common than people expect. The stewards could hear every single word he was saying. There were about 20 or 30 [stewards] in front of us and they didn’t do anything. In that stand in front of me I could see about 30 stewards. One of them was just smirking.”
The club, police and stadium operators spent most of yesterday scouring hours of High definition CCTV footage to match up the social media video to West Ham home stand involved. They continue to attempt to match the amateur footage to stadium CCTV footage to identify. Although the stadium CCTV doesn’t include sound they are able to zoom in on supporters faces to see lip movement which may require professional lip readers to translate who said what.
Met Police Office Andy Sheldon designated to West Ham United said “As you will have all seen today, we are currently looking into some allegations of racial/religious hatred towards Liverpool Player from Monday night. The vast majority of West Ham fans are law abiding fans who attend games to enjoy the football with family and friends”
“The individuals involved in these incidents have shown that they don’t belong at a football. All they have done is tarnished the reputation of the club and its supporters. If you know who this individual is then please get in touch”
West Ham has vowed to give the supporter a life ban when found and are confident that will be able to locate them.