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Since October 2021, La Liga has reported 24 incidents of racist abuse directed towards Real Madrid forward Vinicius Junior, including at 10 football grounds in Spain.
In March this year, the Brazil international broke down in tears as he described the toll it has taken on him.
“I just want to play,” he told a news conference before a friendly between Spain and Brazil. “I want to go to stadiums without anyone bothering me because of the colour of my skin.”
The extent of the abuse Vinicius Jr, 24, has faced is shocking. The figures above include what happened in January 2023, when an effigy dressed to resemble him was hung from a motorway bridge near Madrid’s Valdebebas training complex on the city’s outskirts.
But perhaps more shocking is how very often, in the media or in wider commentary around the Spanish game, Vinicius Jr is labelled as the instigator, the one to blame.
This perception that he brings the abuse upon himself has followed him since he emerged at Madrid. There have been times when he was ‘called out’ for supposedly disrespectful showboating or trickery on the pitch, or for the times he showed a short temper and tendency to react badly to being wound up by opponents or rival fans.
Those things are part of football. Racist abuse is different. But in Spanish football, the sad reality is that, for some, directing racist abuse is still considered a legitimate way of criticising or targeting an opponent.
Speaking to The Athletic last year, Alberto Edjogo-Owono, a Spanish TV pundit and commentator, put it like this: “Vinicius Jr’s case is special, as he is a Real Madrid player, and Real Madrid are both the most loved and most hated team in Spain.
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“There is support for the player as he wears ‘our’ badge on his shirt, but also the opposite — ‘I am against that badge, so I am against his situation’. If you are not a fan of Vinicius Jr, often the conversation is not about the racist abuse but whether he provokes it or not.
“Football is so visceral that it brings out the most primitive in people. So it keeps happening.”
Vinicius Jr at Valencia’s Mestalla stadium in May 2023, when he confronted fans in the stands (Aitor Alcalde/Getty Images)
This was brought into stark relief in September 2022. On the TV football talk show El Chiringuito de Jugones, the way Vinicius Jr had celebrated a recent goal, by dancing on the pitch, was discussed.
Pedro Bravo, president of the Spanish association of football agents, said: “You have to respect the opponent. When you score a goal, if you want to dance samba you go to the sambadrome in Brazil. What you have to do here is respect your fellow professionals and stop monkeying around (‘hacer el mono’).”
There had been no such comments about, for example, Atletico Madrid’s French forward Antoine Griezmann dancing to celebrate his goals.
Bravo apologised and insisted he had been speaking “metaphorically”. The programme’s presenter, Josep Pedrerol, said on air some days later: “It may be an unfortunate and inappropriate expression, but not racist.” Vinicius Jr himself had predicted this kind of ‘apology’ would come in an Instagram post that read: “The script always ends with an apology and a ‘I was misinterpreted’.”
Vinicius Junior celebrates scoring against Valencia last season (German Vidal Ponce/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
But this wasn’t a moment in isolation. It reflected a wider problem. It’s useful here to consider the events of just one month in the life of Vinicius Jr.
Let’s rewind to October 2023. That is when Vinicius Jr testified in a Spanish court investigating the racist abuse he received at Valencia’s Mestalla stadium the previous season. Let’s remind ourselves what happened there.
During that match in La Liga on May 21, 2023, Vinicius Jr confronted a group of Valencia fans in a stand behind one of the goals during a break in play. “You, you, you’re the one who called me a monkey,” he appeared to say to the fans, as players from both sides gathered on the scene. He made a gesture as if to say they had been calling him a monkey or making monkey noises towards him.
There was a long stoppage as match referee Ricardo de Burgos Bengoetxea followed La Liga’s racist abuse protocol, with an announcement made that if racist chanting continued the game would be abandoned. Vinicius Jr spoke with Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti on the sidelines before returning when play restarted. He was visibly distressed and continued to receive jeers from the stands, especially after he was red-carded following a tussle with Valencia’s Hugo Duro during stoppage time.
A report by the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) competition committee later graphically detailed the shocking language used towards Vinicius Jr from the stands during the match. It also said Vinicius Jr had been targeted by “hundreds” of Valencia fans before kick-off outside the Mestalla.
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The RFEF committee fined Valencia €45,000 (£38,000; $49,000). This was the highest financial penalty imposed on a Spanish football club following racist abuse at a ground. They were also ordered to play five matches with their Mario Kempes stand closed — reduced to three after an appeal.
The events of the match — and Vinicius Jr’s reaction afterwards — brought a global spotlight to the issue of racist abuse in Spanish football. In the immediate fallout, La Liga president Javier Tebas criticised Vinicius Jr for saying: “The championship that once belonged to Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, today belongs to racists.” Tebas later admitted he got things wrong and apologised.
Back to early October 2023.
By that time, a Madrid court had charged three Valencia supporters over the abuse Vinicius Jr faced at the Mestalla. Valencia had already helped identify them and banned them from the ground.
After testifying, on October 5, Spanish media reports surfaced that wrongly characterised what Vinicius Jr said to the court. Valencia released a strongly worded statement that demanded Vinicius Jr apologise. Valencia-based newspaper Superdeporte accused him of lying to the court. It published a front page that made him look like Pinocchio.
Esta es la #SUPERPortada 🗞🆕 de este viernes, 6 de octubre
‘PINOCHIUS’ 🤥#𝐋𝐚𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐚𝐃𝐞𝐥𝐃𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐨
📍 Clica en el enlace y hazte con tu versión digital
🔗 🔗 pic.twitter.com/raMd4i4OQG
— Superdeporte (@superdeporte_es) October 5, 2023
About three weeks later, Vinicius Jr was targeted by rival fans with racist abuse once again, in a 1-1 draw at Sevilla in La Liga (October 21). Madrid’s next match after that was in the Champions League against Sporting Braga. Following Madrid’s victory, a now-deleted tweet allegedly sent from the account of Barcelona board member Miquel Camps criticised the Real Madrid forward after he performed several stepovers during Madrid’s Champions League victory over Braga (October 24).
The tweet read: “It’s not racism, he deserves a slap for being a clown. What do these unnecessary and meaningless stepovers represent in the centre of the field?”
Camps was in the stands as Madrid beat Barcelona 2-1 in El Clasico on October 28. Vinicius Jr was again racially abused during that match.
Two days later, at the 2023 Ballon d’Or ceremony, Vinicius Jr received the Socrates Award, which recognises a footballer’s humanitarian efforts, for the work of his charitable foundation and his fight against racism in football.
“I will remain strong in the fight against racism,” he said in his acceptance speech, while the stage’s big screen showed an image from May’s Mestalla game. “It is a very sad thing to talk about racism nowadays, but we have to continue in the fight so that people suffer less.”
Valencia reacted with another statement “lamenting the use of their image and association with isolated behaviour that the club punished quickly and strongly”. The statement repeated Valencia’s “absolute condemnation of racism, while also asking for maximum respect for our fans and our club”.
Vinicius Jr broke down in tears during his Brazil press conference earlier this year (Oscar J. Barroso/Europa Press via Getty Images)
Last year, The Athletic also spoke to Moha Gerehou, a Spanish writer, anti-racism activist and Valencia fan, about this sequence of events.
“The case of Superdeporte will be studied in the future, how they positioned Valencia as the victims,” he said. “There was a choice between protecting a victim of racism or protecting the interests of their football team and their position was very clear.
“They had no qualms about minimising what Vinicius Jr experienced and what he said later. It often happens — there is a complaint of racism but it is reduced to an anecdote, it is said they are just exaggerating. And there is no deep examination of structural racism.
“It is always said that racism is something individual, carried out by just a few. That is a big lie. It is three or four today, then tomorrow a different three or four. Because people, in Valencia and everywhere else in Spain, feel they can abuse Black bodies with impunity. It happens in the stadiums, but also on the borders, racial profiling by police, all areas of life.”
Vinicius Jr is by no means the only Black player in Spain to have suffered racist abuse. In April, Atletico Madrid’s home match with Athletic Bilbao was stopped and an announcement was made instructing fans to stop racist abuse.
“I went to take the corner and I heard some ‘monkey noises’,” Athletic’s Nico Williams told DAZN after the game. “It’s true it was just a few (people). There are fools in all places. So it’s not a big deal, we have to keep working so that this changes bit by bit, as in the end we are having an internal and external fight against this.”
The previous month, a Spanish third-division game was abandoned after Rayo Majadahonda walked off the pitch in protest at their goalkeeper being racially abused. They ended up being the ones punished by the RFEF. They were given an automatic 3-0 defeat against Sestao River, while they were also deducted three points and fined €3,006.
On the same day, Getafe’s home match with Sevilla was stopped after fans shouted racist and xenophobic abuse at Sevilla defender Marcos Acuna and manager Quique Sanchez Flores. Getafe were punished with a partial stadium closure.
Last month, Getafe’s president Angel Torres criticised his own team’s player, Christantus Uche, after the Nigerian midfielder complained about racism and treatment by referees in La Liga in an interview with ESPN.
Torres said to reporters: “He doesn’t understand, how can he say that, he can’t say that. When he has been here for one or two years and understands Spanish, he can say whatever he wants.”
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But the situation around Vinicius Jr — the number of times he has been targeted, the nature and regularity of the criticism he faces — has made him the focal point of Spanish football’s long overdue reckoning with its racism problem. When he scored on his return to Valencia’s Mestalla this year, he imitated the iconic raised fist gesture made by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Mexico Olympics.
Some progress is being made, in terms of action taken — helped a great deal by La Liga’s determination to take meaningful action.
In June this year, three people were sentenced to eight months in prison after being found guilty of racially abusing Vinicius Jr in that May 2023 match at Valencia. That was the first conviction for racist insults in a football stadium in Spain.
In September, a fan was fined €60,001 and banned from sports stadiums for two years by a Spanish high court for racially abusing Vinicius Jr online. Also last month, a Mallorca supporter was sentenced to one year in prison for racially abusing Vinicius Jr and Villarreal’s Samuel Chukwueze in separate incidents.
Compare those outcomes to what happened in September 2022, when La Liga highlighted and denounced racist offences relating to an Atletico home match against Real Madrid, but public prosecutors decided not to take any action in part because they said racist chants directed at Vinicius Jr only “lasted a few seconds”.
It is often said that football is a mirror of society. That the progress (or lack thereof) of a population can be reflected in sport.
Spain is changing — but it has a lot of work to do.
(Top photo: Mateo Villalba/Getty Images)
