Gianni Infantino says players who cover their mouths during on-pitch confrontations should be sent off

FIFA president Gianni Infantino wants to see decisive action against players who cover their mouths during on-pitch confrontations with rivals. 

"If a player covers his mouth and says something, and this has a racist consequence, then he has to be sent off, obviously," Infantino told Sky News.

"There must be a presumption that he has said something he shouldn't have said, otherwise he wouldn't have had to cover his mouth."

Infantino's comments come on the heels of an incident involving Real Madrid star Vinicius Jr. and Benfica's Gianluca Prestianni, with the latter accused of hurling racial abuse towards the former during a Champions League match last month.

Prestianni was given a provisional suspension by UEFA while the governing body investigates the incident. Complicating matters is the fact that Prestianni used his shirt to obscure his face, making the allegations tougher to prove.

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However, Infantino believes that players are only doing more damage by trying to block any views of their faces during on-field spats, which could lead to an assumption of guilt regardless of what has been said. To that end, he has suggested changes in the way governing bodies are empowered to deal with such cases, with the International Football Association Board (IFAB) set to implement new laws of the game as early as next month.

"I simply do not understand if you don't have something to hide, you don't hide your mouth when you say something," Infantino explained. "That's it, as simple as that.

"And these are actions that we can take and we have to take in order to be serious about our fight against racism.

"Maybe we should also think about not just punishing, but also somehow allowing, changing our culture, allowing players or whoever does something to apologise.

"You can do things that you don't want to do in a moment of anger [and] apologise and then the sanction has to be different, to move one step further and maybe we should think about something like that as well."

The FIFA boss insisted that stamping racism out of football is about going above and beyond what is expected, and he wants the sport to be a leader in that regard.

"We have to stop racism," Infantino said. "We cannot just be satisfied by saying, 'well it's a problem in society so we cannot do anything about it except what we are already doing.'"

He added: "That is why we proposed at this IFAB meeting to study a change of the laws of the game and the disciplinary rules. This change is to be proposed before the end of April so we can implement it as well for the World Cup."

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