Post by Webster on Oct 17, 2022 19:08:23 GMT
The Guardian: ‘We live in a difficult time’ - Richarlison on racism and his anti-poverty drive
-Read more: www.theguardian.com/football/2022/oct/17/richarlison-racism-poverty-tottenham-brazil
Richarlison and his Brazil teammates could sense something unpleasant in the air as soon as their national anthem started at Parc des Princes. They were lining up for last month’s friendly against Tunisia and the scale of hostility from their opponents’ fans, effectively a home crowd, felt oddly heightened. “They started booing and cursing, so we already saw that something worse was to come,” the Tottenham forward says.
The players were proved right in the most depressing way possible. Richarlison was celebrating Brazil’s second goal in a 5-1 win when, among several objects thrown on to the pitch, a banana could clearly be seen falling in front of him from up in the stands. If a form of footballing justice was meted out in the eventual scale of the victory, it bore little comparison to the price that should be paid by individuals who blight sport and society with racism.
“The punishment needs to be more severe,” he says. “When that person threw the banana there, I ended up leaving it to the side and celebrating the goal with my teammates. I left it there and kept my focus on the pitch. But, as I said, this type of thing needs to be punished so that other people don’t do the same.”
It is a chilling image, captured clearly by camera footage inside the stadium, and presses home how far there is to go in erasing such mindless acts of cruelty. “We live in a difficult world, in a difficult era, where people don’t have respect for race, for religion, for politics, or whatever it may be,” Richarlison says.
The fact Brazil had posed before the game in Paris with a banner reading “Without our banners we wouldn’t have stars on our shirts” casts the incident in particularly stark relief. The gap between good intentions and happy consequences is yet to be fully bridged even if football is trying. Richarlison is speaking before last weekend’s round of fixtures, which were the second of two dedicated to the Premier League’s No Room for Racism campaign this month. Players took the knee before Richarlison and Spurs faced Everton on Saturday and the hope is that impactful anti-racism actions keep hitting home...
The players were proved right in the most depressing way possible. Richarlison was celebrating Brazil’s second goal in a 5-1 win when, among several objects thrown on to the pitch, a banana could clearly be seen falling in front of him from up in the stands. If a form of footballing justice was meted out in the eventual scale of the victory, it bore little comparison to the price that should be paid by individuals who blight sport and society with racism.
“The punishment needs to be more severe,” he says. “When that person threw the banana there, I ended up leaving it to the side and celebrating the goal with my teammates. I left it there and kept my focus on the pitch. But, as I said, this type of thing needs to be punished so that other people don’t do the same.”
It is a chilling image, captured clearly by camera footage inside the stadium, and presses home how far there is to go in erasing such mindless acts of cruelty. “We live in a difficult world, in a difficult era, where people don’t have respect for race, for religion, for politics, or whatever it may be,” Richarlison says.
The fact Brazil had posed before the game in Paris with a banner reading “Without our banners we wouldn’t have stars on our shirts” casts the incident in particularly stark relief. The gap between good intentions and happy consequences is yet to be fully bridged even if football is trying. Richarlison is speaking before last weekend’s round of fixtures, which were the second of two dedicated to the Premier League’s No Room for Racism campaign this month. Players took the knee before Richarlison and Spurs faced Everton on Saturday and the hope is that impactful anti-racism actions keep hitting home...