Italian soccer has come under fire over the past year for many abhorrent instances of racism, which the Italian FA and Serie A (their top domestic league) has time and again dismissed as nothing much to worry about.
Juventus’ dazzling young striker Moise Kean walked away from the Serie A to go play for an awful Everton team because he was so sick of the monkey chants he was subjected to on the field, chants his own captain refused to back him up over.
Inter Milan’s Romelu Lukaku has also been subjected to multiple instances of racist abuse, which fans and administrators alike have dismissed as not being that big a deal, or a misunderstanding, or just the actions of a few bad apples.
No one there seems to want to do anything about it, and while the rest of the world looks on in horror, the publisher of Corriere dello Spot, a major sporting newspaper in Italy, decided now was the time to make a “Black Friday” joke.
The headline is concerning the Friday matchup between Inter Milan and their striker Romelu Lukaku, and Roma and their central defender Chris Smalling. The match is on Friday. Both players are black. That’s the “joke.”
It’s hard to tell if this is one of the stupidest attempts at tone deaf humor you’ll ever see in sporting journalism, or an antagonistic, trolling act of defiance from people in Italian football. You call us racist? Wait until you see how racist we can get!
