By NAN Sports Editor
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Sept. 24, 2021: AC Milan’s Caribbean-born goalkeeper, Mike Maignan, is taking back the power following an incident of racist abuse from a fan on Sunday, Sept. 19th in Italy.
The French Guiana-born Maignan insists: “I am not a ‘victim’ of racism.” Instead, he said: “I am Mike, standing up, black and proud.”
In a video that appeared on social media, a person could be heard hurling racist insults at Maignan, a French international player, as he warmed up just before the match Sunday against Juventus in Turin, Italy.
The man was identified by Juventus and the police “through the video surveillance system of the stadium” and reported to the judicial authorities, according to an investigator of the police in Turin contacted by AFP.
He is to be prosecuted for “incitement to racial hatred” and faces a fine and a stadium ban, according to this source.
The supporters’ club to which the suspect belonged announced on its website his immediate expulsion, “firmly dissociating itself from such behavior and condemning it strongly.”
Maignan, who arrived in Milan this summer from Lille, called for a concerted response.
“We need to be more and all united in this battle against a societal issue bigger than football himself,” he wrote in a social media post in French, Italian and English. “Do the people who take decisions know what it feels to hear insults that portray us as animals.”
