It’s not football, it’s La Liga

ANOTHER grim episode in Spain unfolded on Sunday, but in confronting this, there is hope it is now inescapable On Sunday, for the first time in 1,285 games as a coach and 47 years in football, Carlo Ancelotti refused to talk about the game.

He had just seen Real Madrid lose 1-0 against Valencia but, standing in the cramped, narrow tunnel that leads to the Mestalla dressing room where he said his best player sat “angry and sad”, he didn’t care about that and couldn’t comprehend anyone else caring either.

So when the standard post-match interview began with the standard post-match question, an enquiry as to his thoughts on another defeat, he decided that, actually, no, this wasn’t going to be standard any more.

Instead, he shot back: “You want to talk about football?! Or shall we talk about the other thing? at’s more important than a loss, don’t you think?”

Maybe this time, at last, some will begin to think so. If the Madrid manager didn’t feel much like talking about football, it was because Vinícius Júnior, the kid in his care, the 22-year-old winger who is probably the most electric, most exciting player in the Spanish league, a genuine superstar for a new generation, didn’t feel much like playing it any more.

Why would he, why should he, when as he arrived at Mestalla a group of fans gathered outside had chanted: “Vinícius, you’re a monkey”?

When from the south stand he had been told the same? When he had been told that he was an idiot, an imbecile. When he had heard the “oooh, ooohs”?

He had had enough. ere was a moment in the second half when cameras closed in on Vinícius’s face, tears welling in his eyes. In its simplicity, its sadness, that may be the most powerful of many dreadful images from Sunday night, but the one that made the greatest impact, the one that started something, which gathered the kind of momentum that could yet mean something tangible, came when he literally made a stand, facing down the men who abused him.

ere were 20 minutes left when he pointed at a Valencia fan behind the goal, saying: “You, you, yes, you”, telling teammates that man there had called him “a monkey”; “he did this”, Vinícius said, imitating an ape gesture, hands tucked under his armpits. Alongside him, Lucas Vázquez confronted fans: “Shitty racists.”

e referee arrived on the pitch and police arrived in the stands.

Ricardo de Burgos Bengoetxea spoke to Vinícius, explaining the protocol and asking him to trust him: first an announcement is made over the loudspeaker, and then, he told Vinícius, “if it happens a second time, we leave”.

ibaut Courtois told him it had happened in the first half too and Vinícius was ready to go already.

e PA announcement, warning the game could be suspended, was met with whistles.

Ancelotti, who has been through this before with Kalidou Koulibaly in Italy, spoke to the official and his player. “He didn’t want to continue,” he said, “but

I told him it didn’t seem fair that he is the one that has to stop playing because it is not his fault: I told him you’re not the guilty party; you’re the victim.”

ere was something in that message reminiscent of the awful sight of Mouctar Diakhaby, the victim of racist abuse sitting in the stands watching his alleged abuser play on two years ago. Ancelotti embraced Vinícius, then kissed him, supporting him in going on.

Maybe they could have walked, maybe next time they will — “had he wanted to we would have gone with him,” Courtois said — but this time he continued. Until the last minute of a game that overran by more than 10 minutes — when he was sent off for thrusting an arm into the face of Hugo Duro who, in the middle of a melee, had him round the neck. As he went, he gestured to the Valencia fans that they were going down.

“e card made no sense,” Ancelotti said afterwards; even if strictly speaking it was deserved, it served to deepen a sense that somehow everything was upside down. As for the gesture, that was natural given everything he had been subjected to, Ancelotti said. Not just here, but in those other grounds too.

On social media Vinícius made the point this was “not the first time, and not the second or the third either” — there have been nine formal complaints made about abuse he has suffered this season — and described racism as “normal”, encouraged even.

He adopted the league’s slogan to insist that this “is not football, it’s La Liga”. Nothing, he said, gets done, nothing happens. e competition that “once belonged to Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Messi and Cristiano, now belongs to the racists”, he said; Brazilians see Spain as a racist country that had left him defenceless.

A subsequent post from his representatives likened him to George Floyd. — e Guardian.