even if parts of Europe are still stained by the problem.
Richards was stunned to learn that Manchester City team-mate Mario Balotelli had been subjected to monkey taunts during the Europa League tie in Portugal on Thursday.
Balotelli suffered similar abuse in Italy when playing for Inter Milan and England players including Emile Heskey and Shaun Wright-Phillips have been targeted in Eastern Europe and Spain in recent years.
Richards believes English football can be proud of efforts to stamp out racism, although the Luis Suarez-Patrice Evra and John Terry-Anton Ferdinand race rows and the targeting of Oldham’s Tom Adeyemi in an FA Cup tie at Anfield last month underline that vigilance is still needed.
“There have been a couple of cases of late we’re not really happy about,” said Richards. “There are going to be little incidents, but as long as they are sorted out and dealt with in the right manner, we’ve just got to move forward.
Balotelli suffered similar abuse in Italy when playing for Inter Milan and England players including Emile Heskey and Shaun Wright-Phillips have been targeted in Eastern Europe and Spain in recent years
“What happened to Mario is not what we want to hear. It’s not nice. But I have to say the efforts of English football to stamp out racism has been outstanding.”
UEFA will wait until they have received their match delegate’s report of the game in the Estadio do Dragao before deciding whether to launch an investigation. Porto claim their fans did not make monkey noises, but were chanting the name of their striker Hulk – a claim City officials will contest.
Yaya Toure has warned Carlos Tevez he will need to apologise to his team-mates as well as boss Roberto Mancini for walking out on the club.
“Carlos knows what he has to say to the boss and the players,” said Toure. “But all the players will be happy if he comes back.”
Tevez will have to wait until Monday at the earliest before coming face to face with Mancini, who has given his squad a couple of days off and returned to Italy for a break.
City plan £35m Benfica swoop
City are ready to make a £35million bid for Benfica star Nicolas Gaitan.
The Argentina international is also on Manchester United's radar, but City are hoping to beat their local - and title - rivals to his signature by simply out-bidding them.
City officials are understood to have contacted their Benfica counterparts this week and made clear their desire to sign the 23-year-old attacking midfielder.
Gaitan is viewed as one of the most exciting and dynamic young players in the world, and impressed in Benfica's Champions League encounters with United earlier this season.
City had him watched in a recent Portuguese League Cup game against Maritimo, and football administrator Brian Marwood is understood to have begun the process of trying to formalise a deal with Benfica.
United have been keeping tabs on Gaitan for the past year and had their scouts assess him last month, having also had him watched in games against Naval and Sporting Lisbon earlier this season.
But with manager Sir Alex Ferguson understood to have been set a spending limit of around £30m to spend in the summer, Gaitan looks to be out of reach - unless he raises additional funds through player sales.
Gaitan has a release clause of around £35m written into his contract and City are said to be willing to meet that figure in order to get their man.
United may instead switch their attention to Gaitan's team-mate Javi Garcia, a more defensive-minded midfielder who also impressed in those Champions League games against the Reds.
Don't let Manchester City do a Rodney!
Blues old guard fire warning over Carlos Tevez return
There's an old saying: Life’s lessons have a habit of repeating until you learn from them. And so, as Roberto Mancini figures out the best way to deal with Carlos Tevez, he might want to take a look back through history.
Star name pitching up in Manchester slap bang in the middle of a title challenge?
The Blues have been here before.
For Tevez in 2012, read Rodney Marsh in 1972.
The circumstances may not be exactly the same, and they may have gone about attracting controversy in different ways.
But there are enough parallels to make the tale of Marsh at City worth retelling as a warning to how a disruptive influence can damage a title challenge.
Forty years ago, the Blues were leading the First Division with a little over a month of the season to go.
Malcolm Allison felt he needed a little something extra for the final push. He paid QPR £200,000 for the mercurial Marsh.
He was meant to be the icing on the cake. Instead, he was the ingredient that caused it to collapse. City, five points clear at the top with eight games to go, ended up finishing fourth. Marsh himself subsequently admitted that he was to blame.
“I have to say that it was my fault, because I did unbalance the team,” he said years later.
Allison, in a 2003 TV interview, suggested that Marsh’s problem was that he wasn’t match fit.
He said: “I’d always liked Rodney Marsh from when he was a kid playing for Fulham. And I thought he would do it. He would be the player.
“But he wasn’t the right player. I used to have five groups of six players in training. The best group was No.1. And Rodney was in No.5 group for four weeks.
“He’d never trained before. He said to me: ‘I didn’t know what training was. I didn’t realise you had to work so hard.”
Ask any of Marsh’s team-mates from that period, and they will tell you that his individualistic style of play didn’t fit a team who had reached the top on a diet of quick passing.
That City side had torn apart opposing defences thanks to the classy midfield play of Colin Bell and Mike Summerbee, and the complementary attacking strengths of the diminutive Francis Lee and giant Wyn Davies.
“The line-up had hardly changed since October, so to bring in a new player for the last lap was utter madness, especially a maverick talent such as Rodney,” reflected Joe Corrigan, the City goalkeeper.
“I thought he was a fantastic player with wonderful individual skill, but therein lay the problem; he had individual ability but in my view wasn’t enough of a team player.”
The late Mike Doyle, in a 2004 M.E.N. interview, put it rather more strongly.
“From the moment Marsh stepped on to the pitch as a City player, the team started to go backwards,” Doyle said. “He had fantastic ability but was only worried about himself.
“Marsh was an extrovert. He was so out of the ordinary, it wasn’t true. He appeared to be a law unto himself on the park.
“Rodney, I felt, was a Marsh man and not a City man.”
Dennis Tueart, who joined the Blues a couple of years after that title collapse, echoed Doyle’s thoughts in his autobiography, published last year.
“Sometimes, he could look the part, especially when the opposition gave him licence to roam,” said Tueart.
“On days like that, you’d think Rodney was a world-beater and a leading talent. But in my opinion it was an illusion.
“My job, and that of Colin Bell, was to storm forward and use our pace to damage the opposition. Rodney slowed us up massively.
“I saw that he often did little that was effective with possession, and his self-indulgent tricks were often in areas of the pitch where he couldn’t inflict any damage.
“When the conditions suited him, he could delight the crowd, but the opposition knew that if they stuck tight to him he would disappear from games.
“So in the really big games, when it came to the crunch, I felt that he would invariably let you down.”
For all the accusations that have been levelled at Tevez, few would claim that he is a selfish player on the pitch.
His willingness to fight for the team cause on the pitch has rarely been in dispute at least before this season.
It is his attitude off the field that has been the cause for concern.
However, as with Marsh in 1972, there are concerns about his fitness too, given that he has not played a competitive match since September 21.
Indeed, Tevez has not scored in any of his five appearances for City this season, missing a penalty against Wigan and too often being off the pace.
He insisted during the week that, despite his long absence, he would be ready to play within a couple of weeks.
Mancini seems unwilling to take the risk, particularly in the light of criticism from Tevez in a recent TV interview.
The striker’s claim that Mancini treated him ‘like a dog’ did not go down well with the boss. According to the City greats, leaving Tevez out in the cold would be a wise decision.
“Since the Tevez situation reared its head the team spirit has increased, which has been proven by them digging in and getting results,” Corrigan said.
“I hope Tevez doesn’t get the chance to play.”
Former City chairman Lee expressed similar sentiments. He said: “You can’t have people making trouble in the dressing room when you’ve got the tremendous spirit City have.
“If he came back and destroyed the team spirit that they’ve got, which would probably win them the title, nobody would forgive him.”
The famously-driven Mancini probably wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he allowed that to happen, either.
Manchester City announces multi-million pound deal
Manchester City Football Club has announced a new commercial agreement with leading bookmaker Paddy Power.
Under terms of the deal, Paddy Power will serve as the Manchester City's official betting partner in the UK until the end of the 2012/13 Premier League season.
Though financial terms of the sponsorship were not released, industry insiders have previously indicated to SportsPro that betting partnerships with top Premier League teams such as Manchester City are typically worth roughly UK£3 million (US$4.7 million) annually.
According to a statement on Manchester City's official website, 'The deal will see Paddy Power and the club collaborate across a wide range of commercial activities. Paddy Power will offer their market-leading range of innovative betting products to blues fans via the Manchester City website and also a specially created City microsite.'
“We wanted to wait for the right partner with the right principles, especially when it came to how they intended to engage with our biggest asset, our fans," said Manchester City's chief brand and commercial officer Ian Cafferky. "Not only do Paddy Power and football go hand-in-hand but, with their dynamic match-day odds and money-back specials, we believe this partnership will provide real added value to our supporters’ match-day experience.”
Paddy Power added, "There are a lot of similarities between Manchester City and Paddy Power, with us both having established reputations for putting our fans and customers first, whilst rising to the top of the table in our respective fields. Paddy Power specialises in surprising and delighting punters and I really look forward to sharing our unbeatable betting value with the Manchester City fans.”
OTHER BOLLOX
Queen's Park Rangers could reignite their interest in former Chelsea midfielder Michael Ballack after the 35-year-old was told he is free to leave Bayer Leverkusen. talkShite
Former QPR manager Neil Warnock has been spotted with Leeds chairman Ken Bates outside a cafe in Monte Carlo. The Yorkshire club are still looking for a new manager after Simon Grayson's exit last month. Daily Mail
Liverpool and Manchester United have been put on red alert after Udinese's 24-year-old Chilean defender Mauricio Isla confirmed he is set to leave the Italian club at the end of the season. talkShite
Tottenham look poised to step up their interest in Ajax centre-back Jan Vertonghen after sending scouts to watch the Belgian against Manchester United on Thursday. Inside Futbol
Former Arsenal midfielder Emmanuel Petit says even the signing of 21-year-old Belgian midfielder Eden Hazard could not save the Gunners from their current poor form. Metro
Manchester United defender Nemanja Vidic is ahead of schedule in his recovery from a knee injury and could even be ready to play before the end of the season. Daily Mail
Arsenal striker Robin van Persie has backed calls from Gunners legend Denis Bergkamp for the club to sign stronger players. The Sun
Blackpool boss Ian Holloway has reportedly told winger Matt Phillips, 20, to forget playing for Scotland because he will be an England star one day. Daily Star
Hypnosis could help Birmingham shock Chelsea in the FA Cup - winger Nathan Redmond has turned to a sports psychologist to help him prepare for games. Daily Mirror
A man has been charged with criminal damage after the St James' Park name was painted on the wall of Newcastle's ground following the removal of a sign. Metro
Everton must fight off interest from Manchester United for manager David Moyes when Alex Ferguson retires, according to Holloway. Liverpool Echo
Gary Neville is on a collision course with former club Manchester United after the club opposed his plans to build a supporters' club opposite Old Trafford. Times
STAT BOLLOX
52 of the 92 football league clubs have won a trophy since Arsenal last won one. It includes play-off finals, the FA Trophy and the Conference League Cup.
