http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/27895655

Cameroon defender Benoit Assou-Ekotto says he chose not to play for France because the country blames black players when the team struggles.

The 30-year-old Tottenham full-back was born in France, but qualified to play for Cameroon through his father.

Ever-present for Cameroon in 2010 World CupHe said: "When the national team get a bad result, they start to say there is a little bit too many black people, Muslim people and this kind of stuff."I don't like it. There is no point for me to play for this kind of country."

After starting his career with Lens, Assou-Ekotto joined Tottenham in 2006 and made his Cameroon debut three years later.

Having helped Queens Park Rangers win promotion to the Premier League during a season-long loan, he is playing at his second World Cup.

Cameroon, who opened their Group A campaign with a 1-0 defeat by Mexico, face Croatia on Wednesday.

Seems a little exaggerated. Is he right?

I think its absolutely no need to bring that up, and feed the media this reason against French. I meant I dont think there are any team that has more immigrant-root than France ever.

To be fair, he is a serial whiner. We've known him at Spurs for years.

Not what I was expecting, but thats typical Benoit. I don't want to talk about the racism side.

I think the real question is would Assou-Ekotto start for France. I think he is exaggerating a bit but I don't think he is completely wrong.

No some of what he said is the truth, he isnt the only one stating this, he is one of the only ones that gave an official support to Anelka for the Quennelle, with Samir Nasri and assumed it and didnt appologized...
In 2010, Nasri, Benzema, Ben arfa and Rami all had a wonderful season, no one got called. The Zidane 2 goals in the final of World cup 1998, that changed drastically the view about French born players wasnt welcome by the 2 lobbies controlling France ( When you control Paris, you control France ).

The 2 lobbies are homosexual lobby, and Zionnist lobby, dont ask me how they got the power, i just discovered it 4 years ago by doing some underground researches, both of those lobbies hate religion (Islam and christianism) and both of them wants France to become like USA, an egoistic country without any deciding power for people and less social and more capitalist....

I believe im not off topic since you ask why Benoit said this, actually he knows very well the subject, media used 2010 scandal to discriminate black and arab people like it was their fault, and simple minded people followed media BS as usual, so yes we feel anger toward media because they fool people and force communities to live separated, and of course it creates a big division as we clearly see in Anglo saxon countries...

In France, Lobbies are illegal, so we dont have any weapons to control them or to fight against them, because in the law they shouldnt exist, but actually they are existing and their aim is to make France and EU in general like USA, we already see the future in USA and we dont want to become like this in the future, our rich people in the opposite would kill to make a Europeen dream and an ultra capitalist countries with health and education not free....

Lets comeback to the topic, Deschamps knew he would have some pressure taking Nasri so its a good idea for the team success not to take him, bot because he is behaving bad, Balotelli for example is worst than him but he got selected.
Deschamps knew that media would talk about Nasri if the team failed and he was wise, to get some pressure off.

What happened to Anelka in UK and Tony parker in US show that its not really different there too, despite the fact that those countries approves lobbying and regulating him, we can clearly see wich of them has the power or is sharing it with others...

Now, i will post you some interesting links and you make your own idea, i will try to find it in English, the Quennelle gate was really interesting in France and UK.

His excuses : http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/dec/30/tony-parker-naz\*-quenelle-salute-dieudonne

Mamadou sakho appologize : http://allainjules.com/2013/11/27/quenelle-les-excuses-de-mamadou-sakho-et-la-colere-des-fans-de-dieudonne/

Samir Nasri didnt appologize as Nicolas Anelka :

Anelka did it on the pitch, and said im not appologizing, i dont like this actual system and their offenses towards religion and races...

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/apr/01/fa-quenelle-yannick-sagbo-benoit-assou-ekotto

A simple gesture of saying **** your system, has done a world tour, the humourist ( Courageous ) who made this sa for the first time in History his show banned by the government and media played a big role of desinformation but went discovered by those who think a little....

I still believe its the reason why Nasri didnt get called, and i understand his feeling of retiring internationally...

All this to say, that if Benoit would be playing for France, he couldnt say what he is saying and im glad he isnt so he keeps his integrity and freedom of speech....

To not change the subject, if some are interested here is a good research to understand exatly the role of media :

Mediating racism : The role of the media in the reproduction of racism

http://www.discourses.org/OldArticles/Mediating%20Racism.pdf

Nice reading.

@tiki

spot on .

Considering he headbutted his own team-mate today, I think maybe we should take BAE's words as suspect, at best. ;)

But yes, I agree with tiki: the media loves to fan flames, and create stories, and the French are not the only culprits of it. The whole 'Y-word' debate regarding Spurs the last couple of seasons (over whether or not Spurs fans should be able to use the word Yid to describe themselves, despite having done so for the past 40 years and did so in order to combat antisemitism) was essentially a case of the media fabricating a story just so they could then waffle on about it for the next 6 months.

The irony, then, is that Spurs fans actually got violently attacked by French Nazis when Spurs played Lyons a couple of season ago, and called a host of slur names for Jewish peoples, and yet, supposedly according to the English media, are the ones who need to 're-think' their stance on the word Yid.

It's all so dumb, and doesn't do a single thing to combat ACTUAL racism in the sport.

Political correctness is going nuts !