Ex-Crawley manager John Yems has had his suspension from football for making racist comments to players extended until 2026 following a successful appeal by the Football Association.
Yems was found guilty of 11 charges of racist abuse in January, 2022 and admitted one and given a 17-month ban.
The 63-year-old’s extended suspension is the longest ban issued to someone in English football for discrimination.
The FA appealed against the sanction on the basis that it was “insufficient”.
A report from the disciplinary commission had said comments made by Yems were “not a case of conscious racism”, which the FA said it “fundamentally disagreed” with.
The appeal board upheld the FA’s claim with a subsequent three-year ban issued until January 2026.
“We welcome the verdict from the independent appeal board to suspend John Yems from all football-related activity until January 2026,” an FA spokesperson said.
“However, we strongly disagreed with their original sanction, as well as some of the elements of their judgement, which we fundamentally believed were not appropriate for the severity of the offences committed by John Yems.
“We are pleased that the independent appeal board ruled that specific findings from the Independent Regulatory Commission were unreasonable, as there were numerous examples of inherent and obvious racist language.
“This is a deeply distressing case for the victims involved, and we hope that the outcome of this appeal will help to bring some closure.
“We also hope that this will encourage anyone who has experienced or witnessed discrimination in the game to report it.”
John Yems AdmissionÂ
Yems was suspended by Crawley on April 23, 2022 amid accusations that he had used discriminatory language and behaviour towards his players between 2019 and 2022.
He parted with the League Two club 13 days later, days after the FA announced its investigation.
John Yems admitted one charge of making comments that had a reference to either ethnic origin, race, nationality, religion, gender or colour but denied 15 others against him.
The independent regulatory commission, which held a hearing in November, found 11 of the charges to be proven and four unproven.
In his defence, Yems had “categorically denied that he was in any way racist” the tribunal’s report stated.
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