The point is, "pushing buttons" - meaning racist and personal insults - is another form of cheating and should be recognised as such. How far it is possible to stamp it out by yellow cards and so forth is another mnatter - but it should be be stigmatised as dirty play, rather than shrugged off as something players targetted in that way need to accept.

It's not just in Football it happens of course - cricket is notorious for the kind of "sledging" that Australians pioneered, and it seems to be have become accepted practice, with no efforts to crack down on it.

Perhaps rather than just penalising the offending players what is needed is to throw the responsibility for controlling the behaviours of team members on to the coaches and managers and clubs, the way they do at times when it comes to racist chants by supporters.