Soccer Racismo Sounds The Same Every Time

Just over midway through Tuesday's Champions League playoff between Benfica and Real Madrid, Vinícius struck one of the most beautiful goals of his career. In response to the strike, and to Vinícius's totally normal celebration of it, the incensed Lisbon crowd sent boos, water bottles, and other projectiles raining down on the Brazilian forward and his teammates. Ginned up by the atmosphere, Benfica's Argentine winger Gianluca Prestianni ran over to confront the goalscorer and exchanged some heated words, most all of them obscured by the jersey Prestianni hiked up over his nose and mouth. Vinícius said Prestianni called him a "mono," "monkey" in Spanish. Prestianni denied this, claiming Vinícius misunderstood him.

The general scenario presented above is depressingly common in soccer, and has been for as far back as you'd like to look. Instances like this are surely less frequent today than in prior times, which to me only calls to mind Malcolm X's bit about knives. To hear certain people tell it, the word "monkey" must possess some downright mystical attributes—always being heard, but somehow never actually being said. Prestianni is only the latest victim of those devilishly deceptive sounds, though Vinícius himself is no stranger to this particular rodeo. Maybe the most direct path to proving once and for all that racism actually has already been eradicated from the sport is to fit all black players with hearing aids.