{"id":75027,"date":"2025-09-06T13:00:01","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T13:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=75027"},"modified":"2025-09-06T13:00:01","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T13:00:01","slug":"fifa-names-drogba-akide-others-to-global-anti-racism-panel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/09\/06\/fifa-names-drogba-akide-others-to-global-anti-racism-panel\/","title":{"rendered":"FIFA Names Drogba, Akide, Others to Global Anti-Racism Panel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Onyeanya Ebere Immaculata<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>FIFA has appointed Ivorian legend Didier Drogba and former Super Falcons striker Mercy Akide to a newly constituted 16-member players\u2019 voice panel tasked with combating racism and discrimination in global football.<\/p>\n<p>The world football governing body announced the appointments on Friday, noting that Akide, who represented Nigeria at three Women\u2019s World Cups joins former internationals drawn from 14 member associations across all six FIFA confederations.<\/p>\n<p>Other African icons on the panel include Liberia\u2019s George Weah, a Ballon d\u2019Or winner and current president, Togo\u2019s Emmanuel Adebayor, and Senegal\u2019s Khalilou Fadiga. Global members include Iv\u00e1n C\u00f3rdoba (Colombia), Formiga (Brazil), Jessica Houara (France), Maia Jackman (New Zealand), Sun Jihai (China PR), Blaise Matuidi (France), Aya Miyama (Japan), Lotta Schelin (Sweden), Briana Scurry (USA), Mika\u00ebl Silvestre (France), and Juan Pablo Sor\u00edn (Argentina).<\/p>\n<p>FIFA said the panel will drive awareness through education, highlight the impact of abuse on players and the sport, and recommend practical strategies to tackle racism.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese 16 panel members will support education at all levels of the game and promote new ideas for lasting change,\u201d FIFA President Gianni Infantino stated. \u201cLet\u2019s be clear on this: Racism and discrimination are not simply wrong, they are crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The initiative forms part of pillar five of FIFA\u2019s global anti-racism strategy, unanimously adopted at the 74th FIFA Congress last year.<\/p>\n<p>Racism has continued to mar world football, with recent incidents in top leagues reigniting calls for stronger action from players, fans, and governing bodies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Onyeanya Ebere Immaculata &nbsp; FIFA has appointed Ivorian legend Didier Drogba and former Super Falcons striker Mercy Akide to a newly constituted 16-member players\u2019 voice panel tasked with combating racism and discrimination in global football. The world football governing body announced the appointments on Friday, noting that Akide, who represented Nigeria at three Women\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":75028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172,175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-sports"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75029,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75027\/revisions\/75029"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}