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Real Madrid forward Vinicius Jr., who has been vocal about his struggles against racism in the Spanish football league — La Liga — chose to stop a game midway to address the racist chants from the stands during their 1-0 loss on Sunday night.
It was an extremely unsavoury moment for the Spanish giants, with the Brazilian star a constant victim of such incidents during his impressive rise to elite status in the ongoing season. Things reached a melting point on Sunday night, and the winger had to report the incident to the referee but got no relief.
The incident forced the game to be stopped for 10 minutes, after which he got into an altercation with the Valencia players which resulted in his dismissal in the second half.
The fight was a big one, and Vinicius was seen pushing an opponent player Hugo Duro in the face and to the floor. He was initially given a yellow card, but after VAR intervention, it was turned into a red.
Videos of the incident have now emerged on social media which show the Valencia goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili grabbing at Vinicius. He was seemingly manhandled by the opponents but Vinicius was the only player who was sent off.
After the game, Vinicius expressed his displeasure on social media with an extremely emotional post.
The translation of the tweet read, "The championship that once belonged to Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Cristiano (Ronaldo) and (Lionel) Messi today belongs to the racists. A beautiful nation, which welcomed me and which I love, but which accepted to export to the world the image of a racist country. I am sorry for those Spaniards who disagree but today, in Brazil, Spain is known as a country of racists. I am strong and I will go all the way against the racists. Even if it is far away from here."
After Vinicius claimed that fans at Mestalla chanted "monkey" at him, Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti considered replacing the star forward. He stated that Vinicius initially refused to continue playing.
"What happened today shouldn't happen," Ancelotti said. "When a stadium yells 'monkey' to a player, and the coach considers taking him out of the field because of that, it means that there is something bad in this league."
"The game should have been stopped," Ancelotti said. "This shouldn't happen. It wasn't only one person, as it has happened in several stadiums. Here, it was a stadium racially insulting a player, the game had to stop. I would have said the same thing if it was 3-0 for us. You have to stop the game, there was no way around it."
Ancelotti said he asked the referee to stop the match, but was told that the protocol was to first make an announcement to fans, then take other action if the problem continued.
