The personal advisor of the player Vinicius Junior, Felipe Silveira, who claimed to have received a banana from the hands of a security guard at the RCDE stadium, in Barcelona, before the game between Brazil and Guinea, on Saturday (17), made a formal complaint to the police this Sunday morning (18).
According to one of the members of Vinicius Junior’s team, who was present at the time of the racist insult and who accompanied Silveira to the police station near the stadium, “we once again notice how they do not consider racism a crime in Spain”.
The first police officer who attended to them gave an “alert” that there was a possibility that a judge would see the gesture as a joke, and not as an offense. The second police officer regretted the fact and commented that Samuel Eto’o, a Cameroonian athlete, suffered a lot from racist attitudes when he played for Barcelona, between 2004 and 2009.
Silveira declined to speak to the press. In the afternoon, he and the rest of the player’s staff left Spain for Portugal, to follow the Brazilian team’s game against Senegal in Lisbon, on Tuesday (20), at 4 pm (Brasília time).
At the police station, Silveira requested that possible images taken at the time of the incident be attached to the complaint. According to his colleague, “we don’t have much expectation or hope of punishment”.
“What caught my attention the most yesterday [sábado], after the act of racism, it was like all the people, the authorities, the security chiefs, everyone minimized it and tried to say that it was something normal. That we should let it go, that is Spanish culture and the life that goes on.”
Silveira denounced having received a banana from the hands of a security guard when entering the stadium before the match. He was accompanied by three other members of Vinicius Junior’s team, including the player’s manager.
The three, who were white, entered without being approached, but when he got to see de Silveira, a security guard allegedly pushed a banana on his chest and said “hands up, this is my pistol”.
As if the criminal act were not enough, it happened precisely in the match in which the CBF chose to be a milestone in the fight against racism. The national team was in black for the first time in its 109-year history and the players from Brazil and Guinea knelt or sat on the pitch during the minute’s silence.
Inscriptions such as “Racism is a crime”, “With racism there is no game” and “Let’s expel racism” were displayed on the screens and on advertising boards, while, before the game and at halftime, black Brazilian artists were heard on the loudspeakers.
“While I was playing with the already historic black shirt and getting emotional, my friend was humiliated and mocked at the entrance to the stadium”, said Vinicius Junior in a post on Twitter. “To make everything public, I ask those responsible: where are the images from the security cameras?”, he charged.
The match against Guinea ended in a rout: 4-1 for Brazil. Joelinton and Rodrygo opened the scoring and Guirassy, from Guinea, scored a header in the first half. In the complementary stage, Éder Militão and Vinicius himself, with a penalty, closed the scoring.
