Valencia-Real Madrid: racist insults to Vinicius, Ancelotti harsh

Valencia-Real: racist insults to Vinicius, Ancelotti harsh

During the thirty-fifth La Liga match at Valencia’s Mestalla and won by the hosts over Real Madrid 1-0 with a goal by Diego Lopez, during the second tem Real’s Brazilian Vinicius spotted a so-called fan in the stands who had addressed a racist insult to him. The striker demanded that this person be removed from the stands and the match was suspended for ten minutes. Then, in the dying minutes, the mockery for Vinicius, who was sent off for an intervention while the game was stopped. Harshly, Merengues coach Carlo Ancelotti went far beyond the single insult by calling in the entire Valencia stadium.

“If a player is shouted ‘Monkey’ and a coach has to think about replacing him there is something wrong with La Liga. La Liga has a problem. Against racism you have to stop the matches. Here we have a stadium shouting ‘Monkey’ and the game has to be stopped. That is what I told the referee. He replied that a protocol must be activated, but what protocol? There aren’t though. A full stadium uttered racist insults. Nothing will happen though, because nothing ever happens.”

“No, I don’t want to talk about soccer. You can’t play soccer like that,” Ancelotti continued, “this is too serious: they threw a ball on the field while we were attacking, they insulted Vinicius the whole time, and at the end they ejected him. What are we talking about? This is 2023, there can’t be racism, we have to go home. I repeat, you have to stop the game, you can’t keep playing, it’s impossible. I told the referee I would take it off, he said no, he would activate the protocol. I am very sad, I never thought of changing a player because they are insulting him. Vinicius the only thing he wants to do is play soccer. He is not angry, he is sad. The game had to be stopped because it was not one person who went crazy, it was a whole stadium that went crazy.”