Gini Wijnaldum was left fuming when Mario Balotelli was denied the chance to make a stand against racist abuse this month.
Brescia forward Balotelli began walking off after angrily kicking the ball into the stands at Verona - only to be manhandled into staying by his team-mates and opposition players.
“It frustrates me a lot,” Liverpool midfielder Wijnaldum told CNN. “Because you don’t know what he’s feeling.
“With Balotelli it was not the first time that it happened. So why don’t you support him and just walk with him from the pitch?”
Balotelli, since insulted by Brescia fans and chairman Massimo Cellino, is among a number of players denied the chance to make a stand after being manhandled into staying on the pitch.
Wijnaldum added: “They will say: ‘Don’t let them get in your head’ or ‘Show them you are better than them’. But they don’t feel the pain that the person who is racially abused. In a situation like that you want to feel supported.”
Wijnaldum revealed he’d spoken about the issue with Holland team-mate and former Manchester United winger Memphis Depay.
To say that Wijnaldum is proud of own country’s line in the sand on racism is an understatement.
“Memphis said it in a conversation I had with him." he said. "A lot of people don’t understand the kind of pain you feel as a black player when you get abused. I felt it a lot.”
Wijnaldum has become the latest leading Premier League star to use his platform to speak his mind on the issue. He believes the time has come to walk off in response to abuse from the stands.
For him the tipping point came two weeks ago when Ahmad Mendes Moreira, a winger at Dutch second-tier club Excelsior, was taunted in a game against FC Volendam.
In response, players in every game across all divisions in Holland refused to play for the first minute last Saturday. It was a stand, says Wijnaldum, that needed to be taken.
“I was with the national team when it happened,” he said.”I felt it a lot with Mendes. I wasn’t even the player on the pitch that got abused and I felt it, sitting in my room in a hotel. So can you imagine how much pain for the player?"
Two weeks on he remains adamant that black players should walk off - regardless of the size of the game.
“Why should I play on?” He asked. “I think everyone should [walk off]. That’s the way you support another person. Because why should you go on?
“If you go on, it will never stop. People will think: ‘We’ll abuse the player, they will go inside, we will stop a little bit, but they will come outside again. They will play the game. So why should we stop?’
“You should also protect the players. What I think right now is that the players are just being used to entertain other people. Who defends the players?”
“People are really happy that I said what I said. They say that I’m a hero but I don’t feel that way. I just said what I felt and what many, many more people wanted to say.
“You are defending other people if you want the game to go on. You are protecting the fans in the stadium. But what about the players who are getting abused?”
Last week the Ukrainian FA were accused of "playing into the hands" of racists after Shakhtar midfielder Taison was given a one-match ban following a red card he received for reacting to racist abuse.
The 31-year-old made a gesture towards Dynamo Kiev fans before kicking the ball at them during his side's 1-0 win.
Wijnaldum added: “What I saw in the Ukraine for example was that the player was racially abused and he got the red card for being angry. In that case you should always protect the player who is getting racially abused.”
Wijnaldum believes the Mendes incident is a wake-up call in Holland for a country whose national team once boasted the likes of Ruud Gullit, Edgar Davids, Clarence Seedorf and Frank Rijkaard.
“I don’t think people took it that seriously,” he said. “Its a societal problem. It happened in other countries but as far as I know it hadn’t happened in Holland. Maybe it did but I didn’t know.
“I was proud of the fact that the national team and the manager supported the players. But we have to look at how long we have to put up with it for?
“It is more serious than people think and we always have to be vigilant.
“Holland is like England in that you can have your own opinion and say what you think about things. But people should not be free to abuse another person racially. You have to punish people really hard. Make an example of them.”
