Yaya Toure has welcomed FIFA's new system of match observers to monitor incidents of racism and discrimination at World Cup qualifiers in the build-up to the 2018 tournament in Russia, saying abuse can "break" players.
Manchester City midfielder Toure, who suffered racist abuse while playing against CSKA Moscow in the Champions League in October 2013, took part in the launch at Wembley Stadium.
Toure said: "I have been in the situation where there have been monkey chants and it's difficult to deal with that. As sportsmen you want to continue to the end but when you hear something like that it hurts you and breaks you.
"You need to give them a radical sanction -- paying a £20,000 fine is not enough, you need to do more."
Major milestone in football's fight against discrimination confirmed today, with monitoring system for 2018 #WCQ pic.twitter.com/s6P3ApyVVe
- Joseph S Blatter (@SeppBlatter) May 12, 2015
The observers will be trained to spot incidents of discrimination and report them to FIFA, which can then impose disciplinary sanctions on the countries involved.
Host country Russia has said it will tackle racism in its football -- some 200 racist incidents were committed by Russian fans between 2012 and 2014 according to a recent report by the SOVA Center, a Moscow-based racism-monitoring group.
FIFA president Sepp Blatter has said "a lot of work needs to be done" to combat the incidents.