Real Madrid have been active and vocal in their condemnation of racial abuse towards Vinicius Junior on Sunday night, but reports from the Spanish capital say that while they obviously want to end racism, there are also ulterior motives in their actions.
Los Blancos railed against the treatment of Vinicius, some have interpreted some of their actions as attempts to shape the discourse of the footballing world too. They announced on Monday that they would be filing a legal complaint in order to open an investigation into hate crimes against the Brazilian, and also issued a statement calling out the Royal Spanish Football Federation for their inaction up until this point.
On Wednesday, speaking after Real Madrid’s basketball side secured a European title, President Florentino Perez spoke to the issue, saying they would no longer tolerate this treatment of their players. However he ended that speech by speaking about how this showed the need for reform in the refereeing setup and a review of the VAR operations, which patently is not connected to racial abuse from fans.
Relevo reference ‘off the record comments’ from within the club saying that Real Madrid are using the incident to further two agendas; reform or influencing the RFEF to change their referees and to discredit La Liga. The purpose of the latter being to make the idea of a Superleague look more attractive.
They go on to state that ‘nobody believed it was a coincidence’ that Vinicius used a La Liga marketing slogan to criticise the league regarding their handling of racism (‘It’s not football, it’s La Liga), despite the fact that La Liga were not in charge of sanctioning fans and clubs.
These are fairly serious accusations, and it should be taken into account that this could well be viewed as an attempt to discredit Los Blancos. Equally, Perez’s speech was strange to say the least, and Relevo tend to be a media source with close links to Real Madrid, which would suggest that there is some truth in the matter. Hopefully time will illuminate the matter one way or another.