racist insults tarnish football match – Libération

2024-10-13 10:27:00

The match between several famous streamers from both countries, including AmineMaTue, Inoxtag and Michou of the Italian team, had a chaotic outcome on Saturday 12 October in Madrid, with a interruption of several minutes due to racist insults from at least one spectator in the compare Brawks, a French player.

Racism isn’t just about professional football. Exhibition meetings between streamers, with themes that are less competitive than festive, are not spared. On Saturday 12 October evening at the Wanda Metropolitano, Atlético de Madrid’s stadium, on the occasion of the return match France-Spain between star content creators of the web, the Iberian streamers certainly took revenge on their French counterparts (2 -0) , but the match, followed closely behind the screens, was ruined by monkey shouts from the stands aimed at a black France player, Brawks, which led to his teammates returning to the changing rooms in protest.

At least one fan was excluded from the stadium, where 30,000 spectators were seated (for a total capacity of 70,000). “This is the first time I am a victim” of this type of racist act, “There is no place in sport”commented Brawks, former professional Call of Duty player, into the microphone during the interruption, around the 56th minute of the game, a few minutes earlier, Brawks himself had immediately gone towards the fan in question to ask him to account, before returning to the changing room.

The two selections then discussed at length to decide whether or not to restart the match, knowing that unlike a classic professional football match, there is no established protocol in the event of incidents of this type. “It touches me a lot. I fight all forms of injustice, there is no place in sport. We will continue the game and fight against racism”wrote Brawks on his X account at the same time. “It’s crazy to call me a monkey! No to racism!”added the Frenchman on his X account, applauded at the end of his speech by the Spanish fans.

IT’S CRAZY TO CALL ME A MONKEY!

NO TO RACISM!

— M8 Brawks 🇭🇹 (@BrokyBrawks) October 12, 2024

This incident occurred as Spain is more than ever confronted with racism, omnipresent in football stadiums with the latest heated incidents, an issue that Real Madrid star Vinicius Junior, himself a victim of racist insults, has helped to put under scrutiny the spotlight through various speeches.

This match between streamers, a rematch of the first leg won by the French 2-0 in November 2022 in Paris, will thus have shed a little more light on the plague of discrimination in stadiums, since the latter accumulate millions of subscribers on social networks. The French team had among its ranks streamers such as AmineMaTue, organizer of the match, Inoxtag and Michou. Called Eleven All Stars 2, the game reached a peak of around 990,000 viewers on the Twitch channel of AmineMaTue, the third French streamer in terms of subscribers on this platform (2.8 million), behind Squeezie and Gotaga. This total of viewers remains far from the peak of 1.1 million people who followed the first leg on the AmineMaTue channel.