da bet vitoria： USMNT star Yunus Musah has shared his account of what happened when Milan's Mike Maignan was racially abused, and the team walked off the pitch.
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Mike Maignan racially abused by Udinese fansMilan walked off pitch in momentMusah reflects on incident, six days laterWHAT HAPPENED?
On January 20, Maignan was the victim of racial abuse from Udinese supporters behind his net. The fans were making 'monkey chants' at the French international, and after he alerted the officials, the Rossoneri came together and walked off the pitch. Now, the U.S. international has opened up on the incident.
AdvertisementGetty ImagesWHAT MUSAH SAID ABOUT THE MOMENT OF THE INCIDENT
Speaking to CNN in an exclusive interview, Musah revealed how truly personal the event was to him.
“We’re used to obviously having away fans and them not liking you and stuff, but when it becomes personal, racial, it really affects you deep down,” Musah said. “All of a sudden we saw that our goalkeeper, Mike, was coming across, telling the referee that there were some people making monkey chants and just being abusive to him behind the goal,” he recalled. “Obviously, we’re in an away stadium as well, so the majority of fans from the other team – it was very intense for Mike to be receiving all that abuse from so many fans… So it was really, really important that when we saw that, the whole team reacted great. We all stuck by our friend…. We’re people before athletes and we just forgot about the game and focused on our friend.”
WHAT MUSAH SAID ABOUT HOW RACISM IS BEING ADDRESSED
For Musah, he's faced a similar moment before, when his Valencia side's fans racially abused Real Madrid's Vinicius Junior in May, 2023.
“It felt like a déjà vu moment,” said Musah. “We’ve seen it before – it was like, ‘Here we go again.’ The situation, I’ve seen it before; it is very ugly.”
When the Rossoneri walked off the pitch, it was a team effort, and everyone was behind Maignan in that moment.
“I feel like it’s a good thing to do because then fans, or people that were behaving that way and made Mike walk off the field, realize that they’re affecting the outcome of the game by being like that,” he explains. “And maybe it would stop them doing it because they’ll know that, if they do that, the match is going to be suspended.”
Going forward, though, Musah argues more needs to be done about racism in the game.
“The standard thing is that people would post about on social media, the federations and clubs will ask us to make messages about racism, to send it to people and then in two or three weeks’ time, it dies out and we forget about it,” said Musah. “And then, obviously, it happens again. So that’s why players feel like there’s not enough being done.”
Getty ImagesWHAT MUSAH'S MESSAGE IS MOVING FORWARD
“I feel like the ultimate message is just to teach and to educate people on the gravity of this. Not just: ‘You’re being racial’ or ‘you’re being offensive…’ You’ve got to treat each other with respect. Ultimately, at the end of the day – we’re all human beings,” he said. “We’ll be in a better place if we all respect each other and treat each other equally.”