Heskey: Richarlison banana incident shows lack of progress
Former England striker Emile Hesky talks about the unfortunate racist incident that occurred to Tottenham player, Richarlison.
In 2022, it’s quite sad that we are still seeing racist acts like what happened to Tottenham player Richarlison last week, when someone in the stands threw a banana at him after he scored a goal. There will always be ignorant people, but could we be doing more as a whole to prevent these acts from happening? Former English striker Emile Heskey thinks so, and I think many would agree.
“We keep asking for certain things. We keep saying that we’re getting better, and we’ve moved on,” said Heskey. “We’re not going anywhere, to be honest with you.”
Tottenham manager Antonio Conte was also disappointed by seeing this kind of thing happen in this day and age. Though racism is never forgivable, the discussion has been going on long enough that the ignorance is no longer excusable. And yet, we are seeing acts like this happen on a regular basis, and it is frustrating.
“I hope these people are banned from football for the rest of their life,” said Conte. “It’s a situation that is very disappointing even to have to make a comment on.”
Earlier in September, another Brazilian player, Vinicius Junior, was also the target of racist acts when Real Madrid played Atlético Madrid and some Atleti fans yelled out racist chants referring to him as a monkey.
Richarlison himself expressed his outrage at the incident that happened to him and called on the league to enact strict consequences, but doubted that anything would actually happen.
“They might get fined 5,000 pounds,” said Heskey. “Then I’ll go and do something with betting and I’ll get fined 100 grand. The thing is priorities, isn’t it? So, it’s not a priority.”
“I’ve got kids playing and it’s sad because they could still be going through what their grandparents went through and that’s 50 years apart. Are we getting anywhere? We are because we’re discussing it. When my grandparents were going through it, we weren’t discussing it. Now we’re discussing it, which is great.
But we’ve really got no action. No call to action. No nothing.”