Vinícius Júnior: Real Players Threatens to Leave Pitch Over Racism

Real Madrid’s Vinícius Júnior pointing out a group of Valencia fans who he said called him a monkey. (Jose Jordan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)

Real Madrid forward Vinícius Júnior says he and his team-mates will leave the pitch if they face any more racism this season.

The Brazil forward broke down in a press conference earlier this year when talking about the abuse he has encountered, saying he felt “less and less” like playing football.

And now Vinicius says Real will walk off if they need to this season.

“It wasn’t the first time, nor the second, nor the third,” Vinícius Júnior wrote in a post on his Twitter and Instagram accounts. “Racism is normal in La Liga. The competition thinks it’s normal, the federation does too and the opponents encourage it.” Spain, he said, was becoming known in his native Brazil “as a country of racists.”

On Sunday, Vinícius Júnior was met by fans chanting the word “mono” — monkey — before he even stepped off the Real Madrid bus outside the Mestalla stadium in Valencia. The match was briefly halted in the 71st minute as he pointed out some of his abusers to the referee, and an antiracism statement — part of a league protocol for such incidents — was read to the crowd over the stadium loudspeakers. By the end, though, it was Vinícius Júnior who was cast as the villain: He received a red card in the dying minutes of injury time after scuffling with an opponent who had charged at him.

Real Madrid said it believed the abuse directed at its player qualified as a hate crime under Spanish law, and the club said it had filed a complaint with the relevant authorities demanding an investigation. “We have a serious problem,” the president of Spain’s soccer federation acknowledged Monday, calling racism in the nation’s stadiums an issue “that stains an entire team, an entire fan base and an entire country.”