The time appears to have finally come when a player says enough is enough, and for Real Madrid’s Rodrygo, taking a stand against the racists, that deserves respect.
As Vinicius Junior has also recently found out, if you’re world class but happen to be black, that’s seemingly enough to spark a social media free for all.
There’s clearly a lot of people that still think it’s acceptable to slide into a player’s DMs for the express purpose of abusing him.
What Rodrygo has done is taken all of that power back and reduced the racists to nothing.
“Racists are always active. My social networks were invaded with insults and all kinds of nonsense,” he was quoted as saying by transfer expert and CaughtOffside columnist, Fabrizio Romano.
“If we don’t do what they want, if we don’t behave as they think we should, if we wear something that bothers them, if we don’t lower our heads when we are attacked, if we occupy spaces that they think is theirs, racists take action with all this criminal behaviour,” But it’s their bad luck, we will not stop!”.
If nothing else it’ll make him an even bigger target in future away matches, which is why him speaking out in such depth and with such clarity is a big win for the player and for all those fighting to rid football of the racists.
Rodrygo’s outburst comes in the wake of Brazil’s historic defeat to Argentina at the Maracanã.
Though it isn’t known what sparked his words, it’s abundantly clear that he and his fellow black players have just about had enough of it.