The Senegalese Cheikh Sarr, goalkeeper of Rayo Majadahonda (center), a Spanish soccer team, expressed this Monday that the racist shouts received in last Saturday’s match against Sestao River (north) were “horrible.” He explained that “I couldn’t do it.” hold on” and said that “he had never experienced it in football”, while pointing out that he did not attack the follower.
«What happened this past Saturday was horrible. She couldn’t hold on. It was a horrible day for me. I had never experienced it in football. From minute 50 or so on, they start saying strange things to me, monkey screams and things like that,” he explained in an interview on the ‘El Partidazo’ program on ‘Cope’, in which he declared that not only was he insulted by a person , but “several.”
«They are also insulting my teammates who are playing, (telling them) ‘fucking Spaniards.’ After this, they are insulting me all the time, making monkey screams, things like that and much more. I don’t look back or pay attention to them. Until minute 82, 83, when they score the second goal, suddenly I go for the water and they are yelling at me, insulting me, they are telling me everything; ‘fucking black man run’, ‘fucking black man…’.
The fan then insults him from “very close, about a meter” away. He tells him “fucking black, run, fucking nigger,” as the doorman explained.
«I went for him. I don’t do it with an aggressive gesture. I wanted to grab him to ask him why he insults me,” Cheihk Sarr explained in ‘Cope’, where he insisted that he did not attack the follower: “I grabbed his scarf. I did nothing”.
After that situation, the referee of the match, Francisco García Riesco, went to the area and sent off the goalkeeper. «The referee hasn’t asked me anything and he shows me the red card. It doesn’t tell me anything. As a footballer, I have experienced a racist situation and I got angry. The referee has to defend a player who does racist things to him rather than the stands. “I wanted to ask you why you are red,” he said.
“I was very nervous,” admitted the goalkeeper, who denied that he approached the referee in a violent manner, as stated in the minutes. «It may be how he has seen it. It’s not violently. I went to talk, my classmates are holding me down and I wanted to go to find out why it was red and he didn’t explain anything to me. “I went to speak with all the respect in the world,” he said.
The Rayo Majadahonda goalkeeper asked, in any case, “forgiveness” to the referee. «If he thought it was an aggressive gesture, it was not the case. I went to talk to him in a friendly, normal way,” he said.
Sarr welcomed his team’s decision not to continue playing the game. If he hadn’t been sent off, he wouldn’t have wanted to continue playing either. “I couldn’t,” remarked Cheikh Sarr, who did not speak to anyone in the locker room, although his teammates addressed him. “He was almost crying,” he added.
The Senegalese goalkeeper is exposed to a possible sanction for his expulsion. «A person who has suffered racism should not be punished. He is going to surprise me (if he is sanctioned) because he doesn’t seem fair to me. “A person cannot live in this situation and also punish him,” said Sarr, who explained that, if he is punished, he would not understand it but “we have to accept it.”
«Apologize for the act I did to go and get his scarf (from the fan). I don’t do it as a violent gesture. “I wanted to ask him why he was treating me in a racist way and why he was insulting me,” he insisted during the interview at ‘Cope’, in which he considered that it was the “only way” to denounce what he was suffering at that moment in the game. .
He also said that, if the follower who insulted him asked for forgiveness, “from the bottom of my heart I would forgive him.”
Likewise, he was asked about Vinicius Júnior and his usual denunciation of racist shouts. «I am going to death with him, because he has also experienced it a lot of times. When he has lived it, we are supporting him too. It is not normal. Racism has no place in sport. No sense. “I am very proud of Vinicius, his way of expressing it, and we thank him for supporting us and fighting against racism, because he cannot do it alone,” he said. EFE
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