Brazilian soccer star Vinicius Jr. is frequently targeted for racist insults when playing for Spain’s Real Madrid team. A match in Valencia on Sunday, had to be temporarily stopped after the forward said he was insulted by a fan behind one of the goals at Mestalla Stadium.
“It wasn’t the first time or the second or the third,” Vinícius said on Instagram and Twitter. “Racism is normal in La Liga. The competition thinks it’s normal, as does the federation, and the opponents encourage it.”
“The championship that once belonged to Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Cristiano [Ronaldo] and [Lionel] Messi today belongs to the racists,” he posted. “A beautiful nation, which welcomed me and which I love but which accepted to export to the world the image of a racist country. I am sorry for those Spaniards who disagree, but today, in Brazil, Spain is known as a country of racists.”
Vinícius, who is Black, has been subjected to insults since he came to play in Spain five years ago, and in January the attacks reached a new level when his effigy was hanged off a bridge in Madrid ahead of the derby against Atletico Madrid in the Copa del Rey.
On Sunday, Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti considered replacing the star forward after Vinicius said fans at Mestalla chanted “monkey, monkey” at him.
“What happened today shouldn’t happen,” Ancelotti said. “When a stadium yells ‘monkey’ to a player, and the coach considers taking him out of the field because of that, it means that there is something bad in this league.”
The veteran coach refused to talk about the game after what happened, saying his team’s loss meant nothing.
“The game should have been stopped,” Ancelotti said. “This shouldn’t happen. It wasn’t only one person as it has happened in several stadiums. Here, it was a stadium racially insulting a player. The game had to stop. I would have said the same thing if it was 3-0 for us. You have to stop the game. There was no way around it.”
Ancelotti said he asked the referee to stop the match but was told that the protocol was to first make an announcement to fans and then take other action if the problem continued.
Real Madrid lodged a hate crime complaint. “Real Madrid C. F. strongly condemns the events that took place yesterday against our player Vinicius Junior,” it said.
The attacks, in its view, “constitute a hate crime” for which the club has filed a complaint with the State Attorney General’s Office, the club said.
The league has made nine formal complaints over racist abuse directed against Vinicius over the past two seasons.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva joined a wave of Brazilian politicians, players and clubs coming out to support Vinicius and criticize racism in the Spanish league.
“I would like to express my solidarity with our Brazilian player, a poor boy who succeeded in life and is potentially becoming one of the best players in the world, certainly the best at Real Madrid, and he is attacked in every stadium he plays in,” Lula said at a news conference.
“I think it is important that FIFA, the Spanish league and leagues in other countries take real action because we cannot allow fascism and racism to dominate football stadiums,” the president said.
