See you in hell, Bacon!
Religion in sports is bad.
Sports is supposed to be inclusive and not accentuate people's differences.
And because some Muslims in here are crying out, again. Here's something that should make more sense to you: back in I guess 98 or so I personally witnessed people of your denomination (basically a club consisting of Turks only, Bosporus something, Kreisliga in Düsseldorf) take offence in their opponents' overly Christian acting, as in: "take that mofos, we crusaded your ass" while crossing themselves after goals and also doing crosses with their fingers (as if to protect themselves from demons) when Bosporus players were addressing them. The situation escalated at some point and it came to a fight, they game was called off.
Now do you think the public display of religion was helpful in this situation?
Do you think a young German Turk (raised Muslim, but not knowing wtf he really is) thinks "oh wow, I could play for Germany someday too" when German national players cross themselves after goals? Probably not.
If you even have half-German, ex-national player, now commentator Mehmet Scholl complaining about Holtby doing the cross then it must be strange for people to see that shit.
If FIFA can ban/punish taking off shirts in part probably also because it offends ME countries to see manboobs on TV (from what I understand it was introduced for the WC 2002 in which countries like Saudi Arabia participated), then religious display should absolutely be punishable too.
Of course to me there many more reasons for that, like how often do you see religion in cartoons? Those are supposed to be mass-compatible and since football doesn't have age restrictions (like other sports that can only be televised at noon in most countries) so should be football. Why is there supposed to be religion in your face in places you don't/wouldn't expect it?
Lastly, religion can be some fucking vile shit. Why would people, who narrowly escaped persecution/death on the hands of followers of a religion be reminded of it, again, in places where they least expect it? Especially with islam which, to some, cannot exist in a secular society because islam = law and can therefore also be referred to as ideology, how that different from fascist/Roman salute? Ohh, but all of us take offense in that, do we?