Barcelona: A storm over racism in Spanish football erupted on Monday after a fan threw a banana at Barcelona full-back Dani Alves, with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and FIFA president Sepp Blatter joining widespread outrage.
A spectator threw the banana onto the pitch near the 30-year-old Brazilian international as Barcelona played at Villareal on Sunday night.
Alves won praise for his reaction, picking up the banana to take a bite before getting on with the game and setting up a goal in Barcelona’s dramatic come-from-behind 3-2 victory.
It was the latest in a long series of racist taunts in the Spanish game and one of many suffered personally by Alves during more than a decade with Sevilla and then Barcelona.
“Dani Alves gave a daring and strong response to racism in sports,” Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff said in a series of Twitter messages. Such racism had become “unfortunately common,” she added.
Blatter also reacted on Twitter on Monday, saying: “What @DaniAlves2 tolerated last night is an outrage. We must fight all forms of discrimination united. Will be zero tolerance at #World Cup.”
Referee David Fernandez Borbalan noted the banana-throwing incident in his match report, which will be reviewed by the competition committee of Spain’s football federation on Tuesday and could lead to a sanction.
Barcelona welcomed the condemnation of the banana insult by Villareal, who themselves sent a message on Twitter after the game saying: “Pity to see an ignoramus capable of such a lamentable act. There is no room for it in sport and even less in our club.”
Villareal’s reaction was a move in the right direction towards “converting grounds into areas where sports take priority and where the bad behaviour by some people is, first, isolated and then, eradicated for good,” Barcelona said.
“I have been in Spain 11 years and it has been the same for 11 years. You have to laugh at these backward people. We are not going to change it, so you have to take it almost as a joke and laugh at them,” Alves said after Sunday’s game.
Alves’ teammates and fans lent him public support. “We are all monkeys,” his compatriot Neymar said on the Instagram social networking site, where he posted a photograph of himself eating a banana and his two-year-old son hugging a banana toy.
Former England international Gary Lineker, who once played for Barcelona, tweeted after the match: “Utterly brilliant reaction from Alves. Treat the racist berk with complete disdain!”
Racism has long been a problem in European football stadiums and the continental and global bodies — UEFA and FIFA — have tried to launch campaigns to combat it.
