Heskey on Richarlison racism incident: "Are we going to move forward?"

Former

Liverpool

and England forward

Emile Heskey

has questioned if football would ever "advance" in its approach to racism. Following Richarlison's goal in

's 5-1 victory over Tunisia at the Parc des Princes in Paris, a spectator threw a banana onto the field in front of him.

After the game, the player voiced displeasure and demanded severe consequences, but he sounded skeptical that such action would be taken. Tottenham teammate

and former England captain

Rio Ferdinand

expressed their support, while

's club boss Antonio Conte stated on Thursday that there must be severe punishments, stating, aid on Thursday there must be heavy sanctions, saying: "For sure I hope these people are banned from football for the rest of their lives."

In an interview with Stats Perform, Heskey expressed skepticism that any sentence meted out would be sufficient and cited broader issues about how the football authorities deal with racism.

"It's a tough one for me to really discuss because we still haven't moved forward,

" he said.

"And are we going to move forward? That's the question I keep asking, are we going to move forward?

"We keep asking for certain things. We keep saying that we're getting better, and we've moved on. We're not going anywhere, to be honest with you. They might get fined £5,000. Then I'll go and do something with betting and I'll get fined £100,000. The thing is priorities... It's not [treated as] a priority."

Heskey, who is the seventh-highest scorer in Premier League history with 516 goals, acknowledged that some progress is being made because racism is being talked more openly than in the past, but he believes that not enough is being done to combat it.

"It's sad because I've got kids playing... they could still be going through what their grandparents went through and that's 50 years apart,"

he added.

"Are we getting anywhere? We are because we are discussing it. When my grandparents were going through it, we weren't discussing it. Now we're discussing it, which is great. But we've got no action. No call to action. Nothing."

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