Vinicius Junior suffered several instances of reported racist abuse during the 2022-23 season, with the most high-profile situation being during last month’s encounter between Valencia and Real Madrid at the Estadio Mestalla.
Vinicius was visibly emotional at the time, and there was a lot of fallout following the incident, with the Brazilian among numerous figures in Spanish football demanding that more is done to prevent these cases from happening.
Yunus Musah was on the bench for Valencia when the incident happened, and as he told The Guardian (via MD), it did not come as a shock to him.
“Honestly, I wasn’t shocked, because I’ve seen a lot of that stuff happen a lot before.”
“Not in our stadium, but around La Liga. So I wasn’t really surprised. Which is sad, because, it’s just really shouldn’t be normal. It shouldn’t be normal.”
Musah was also far from pleased at the Valencia supporters that chanted at Vinicius following the racist abuse that he had been subjected to.
“I was quite far away from where the incident started, because it was a group of fans next to him, behind our goal.”
“But what I didn’t recognise obviously was… where the whole stadium was really chanting against him. While they didn’t, not everyone knew what was going on. So that was quite sad to see, the stadium being at its loudest to chant against someone that was being racially abused. The stadium was as loud as I’ve ever heard, you know, and that was like, I can’t imagine how it must have felt for Vinicius.”
Musah’s sentiments will be echoed by many people across Spanish football. More must be done to stop these incidents from happening.
Image via EFE
